


Jersey Boy

by Fordtato



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: 1969, 1970s, Activism, Aftermath of Violence, Antisemitism, Backupsmore University, Blood and Violence, Drug Use, Fiddauthor Week, Fidds is passionate about making the world a better place, Ford is angry at the world, Graphic Description, Hippies, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, Jewish Pines Family, M/M, Medical Procedures, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Racist Language, Slow Burn, Snarky Banter, Vietnam War, anti-war demonstrations, neither of them have patience for stupidity, what better place for these young men to make their mistakes than at college?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-06-09 02:18:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6885211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fordtato/pseuds/Fordtato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ford does not want to be at Backupsmore University. He should be in California, at West Coast Tech, showing the world that he's more than a freakish waste of space from Jersey; showing the world that he's more than the scrawny, brainy half of a dynamic duo. He's not like other college students, lost and aching for meaning like tumbleweeds—he knows exactly what he wants: He wants to make a mark. But then he meets Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, who shifts Ford's worldview from black-and-white, to a rainbow of possibilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mostly Bug Free Dorms

The Backupsmore University brochure wasn’t nearly as interesting as one would would think by the way Stanford Pines pored over it, but if anyone were to wander by and see the way he stubbornly refused to look away from it's pages, they might think it a map to glistening treasure or the Fountain of Youth, rather than just a mediocre list of mediocre “luxuries” provided by a mediocre “school”:

  * Bug free dorms!*

  * Edible lunches!*

  * Certified non-criminal teachers!*




There were lots of asterisks on the inside panel, and if anyone cared enough to make it all the way to the end of the brochure (most people didn’t) they might find an abundance of words like “mostly” and “kinda” and “only in the state of New York.”

Ford had stopped reading after the first three bullet points, letting his mind wander endlessly on in the silence of the train cart, not allowing himself to look up at his mother sitting across from him. In all honesty, she’d only tagged along to make sure (at least one of) her son(s) would be safe on his first long trip away from home, and since her last awkward comment on the quality of the train ride (“My, Stanford, aren’t these seats soft?”, “Wow, there’s enough space here to take a nap.”, “There’s enough room for another bag! I bet you could have packed a suitcase more and a half!”) she had lost her tongue, following her son into absolute silence and staring out the window with the same laser-focus he was giving to the brochure currently being crushed in six-fingered fists.

(looking at the two of them, one would realize that it was from his mother that Ford got his keen ability to avoid the thoughts that were ripping him into pieces, that running away is often genetic, and that the only distinction between their habits lied in the routes they took away from their problems— she escaped in false divination in the stars, he distracted himself with a dedication to finding the truth in them)

Of course they were quiet — neither of them could really get a word in edgewise over the rumble of the train and the incessant silence of a brother who wasn’t there, who would have wanted to be there, who _would have wanted to see me start at college and_ —

_He’s fine. He’s got personality. Stop. (Repeat.)_

The mantra had stuck itself to the roof of Ford’s mouth, sharp and sticky like bramble, and he chewed on the thought like old gum. Stan’s absence was still there, but it had since lost its flavor and Ford wanted more than to climb to the roof of the rickety train cart and scream it from the top of his lungs, to spit the unfathomable idea of missing Stan (dad said he was only slowing you down and it was on purpose he was suffocating you on p u r p o s e) into the wind, even if it meant it would fly back at him.

He was speeding towards a school which he already hated well before he even got the chance to see it (but he would hate it regardless, inevitably so, because it wasn’t West Coast Tech, and there would be no hope for some deformed Jersey Yid to do anything with himself there, nothing more than to roam the hallways with a mouthful of resentment and unspoken words and letters he would never get to send to a brother who) — _He’s fine. He’s got personality. Stop. (Repeat.) He’s fine_ —

“Honey?”

He wrinkled the BU brochure in his hands (it was an ugly brownish-red, printed on thin flimsy paper, nothing like the royal blue and golden trim of the brochure for West Coast; no, it was red, dark red, Stan had liked red, _He’s fine_ �—)

“Yes, Mom?” His eyes met her teary ones for a split second before it struck him what a stupid idea that had been and he bounced his gaze back down to the brochure shaking in his fists.

“I’m proud of you, Stanford.” The words were wet and heavy and he knew if he looked up he’d see tears falling, so he refused to look up, doubling down on passing the illusion that the stain on the big, brown “B” of his brochure was as fascinating as the cure to cancer, or a pin-up centerfold.

“Thanks, Mom.” It came out sharper than he’d intended, the barbed feelings leaking out slightly. A rustling filled the room as she straightened her back, adjusting the faux-fur coat she’d grabbed from the window of the pawn shop while Filbrick was still passed out that morning, surrounded by empty beer cans and reeking of a heavy conscious.

If Ford had spared her a glance, he might have seen her hastily scrubbing tears from her eyes and mouthing a curse at her newly smudged eyeliner. She turned back towards the window, at the rolling New England countryside spinning along the horizon. The distant city was in view.

__________________________

Her eyeliner was still a mess when she got off the train, but Ford couldn’t find it in himself to mention it. She had noticed it herself in the window of the hailed taxi, and spent the majority of the ride from the train station to the campus rummaging through her purse, pulling out one cheap eyeliner pencil after another and dragging them across her lid.

When the taxi finally rolled up in front of the iron gates signalling the front of campus, Ford trudged to the trunk to unload his bags, silently judging the dead trampled grass on Backupsmore’s lawns, the unkept vines crawling their way up the side of the Student Services Building, and the ambiguous brown markings on the iron bars of the windows and gates, which honestly could have been either rust or blood. Ford shrugged, at least appreciating that the mystery was up for interpretation, and lugged one duffle bag after another over his shoulders. The first was filled with clothes, toiletries, family photos and the small wad of fives his dad had offered him (at his mother’s request) with that perpetual scowl etched into his perpetually unimpressed face. The other four duffel bags were filled with books.

He couldn’t take them all, he’d realized when he packed away the bookshelf on his side of the room in Jersey (a process that entailed him facing left at all times, putting an impossible effort towards ignoring the empty bed and the boxing gloves on the dresser opposite his, _He’s fine_ —), but choosing which books to leave behind for his father to inevitably throw out felt as painful as leaving behind a family to go fight in the war.

(he threw out that analogy as quickly as it graced his thoughts—it was nothing like the war, nothing like the drafted lists that would have picked him from the comfort of his books and the discomfort of his one-person-too-small family, straight into a rainforest in Vietnam, where the horror stories were already starting to spew back to the states in hushed rumors of gunfire and screams and terrors that left the fighters shell-shocked, shells of their former selves, and a part of him was horrified that Stanley’s “accident” crossing him off the list at WCT almost would have landed Ford in the middle of a cloud of bullets, but the other part was almost relieved, because even if Stan wasn’t actually fine— _He’s fine_ — out there, at least he was safe from the draft, from the war that would have eaten away at his— _He’s got personality_ —personality, and at least Stanley would stay _Stanley_ , even if it meant being Steve Pinington in Pennsylvania, selling bandages on late-night TV and— _Stop_ —)

“Stanford Pines?” The receptionist called his name, with a bored and droning voice that screamed _they don’t pay me enough_. With a deep breath, Stanford dragged his bags to the front desk, trying not to stare at the six— _geez_ —thin metal hoops hooked through her nostrils.

He swallowed his nerves and stretched a smile that probably looked more grimace across his face. “Yes. Um. Yes?”

Without a word she thrust a stack of forms and a silver (and slightly sticky) key into his hands. She stared at his sixth finger. He rolled his eyes, decidedly too tired to shove his hands in his pockets, and no longer tried so hard to stop himself from staring at her six piercings.  

“The orientation kick-off ceremony’s at five, in the cafe-gym-itorium. Try not to be late, or you’ll be stuck with the benches with ants.” The words left her in a monotone stream, like her mouth was working off muscle memory in a song-and-dance she’d been performing since the freshmen started spilling in that morning. “You’ll be bunking in the Cood B. Werce Dormitory Building, on the north side of campus. Here’s your key, here’s a bottle of bug repellent — first one’s on the house — and here’s your roommate agreement contract. Make sure to get it signed by your roommate when you meet him, and returned to this desk by Wednesday. No girls allowed in your dorm without—”

“Um, I’m sorry, what was that?” He shuffled through the papers until the form in question was on top of the stack, awkwardly shifting his fingers, which were still under her scrutinous gaze.

  
“No girls allowed.” As she spoke, her eyes bounced from finger-to-finger, counting them again and again, and she shook her head every time she got to six. “This is a place of learning, not for getting funky in your—”

“No, _no_. God no. I mean the part about the roommate? I don’t have a roommate. I requested a single dorm room.” He cleared his throat and when she didn’t lift her eyes, he doubled his efforts of staring intently into her piercings.

“So did everyone else here. Corners had to get cut, so—”

“ _Listen_ , ma’am. I signed the single-dorm request form months ago, and I really, _really_ think I—”

She finally tore her eyes from his hands, seemingly finally satisfied with her ability to count to six, and shot a glare up to meet his. “No, _you_ listen, _sir_. I don’t know where you think you’re enrolled, but we can’t afford to give a single-room to every student who asks. It’s a first-come, first-served system, and there’s nothing I could do about it. This is Backupsmore. Not some fancy-shmancy set-up like, I dunno, Oxford or West Coast Tech.”

Whatever response Ford had lined up curled up and died in his throat as the receptionist called the next student for their key.

_____________________________________

When he met with his mother again outside the Student Services Building, she was putting out a cigarette and pretending she just hadn’t been smoking, and he was pretending not to notice it.

“So.” She crossed her arms and looked him over, checking for miscellaneous stains to nitpick at or a stubborn cowlick to lick down, but found nothing. He had never been the messy twin, after all.

“So.” He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the next, holding the folder of forms behind his back, as the air thickened between them expectantly.

Without another word, she pulled from the pockets of her coat a glistening necklace with a pendant shaped like an open hand. It was a Hamesh— a Jewish good-luck-charm. Ford gaped at the sight of it and the way it sparkled in the sun; the pendant was set with gleaming blue stones in the smooth silver palm, and the chain it dangled from was thin and stringy like spider silk.

He recognized itfrom a glass cupboard in his grandmother’s home, an apartment across the street from his father’s pawn shop which always smelled like pastries and tobacco. The pendant had never been alone, though—it usually sat in its revered spot next to his grandmother’s old tchotchkes from the homeland and her good china, on a velvet jewelry cushion alongside its brother, its twin, an identical Hamesh pendant inlaid with rubies, fixed on a chain of gold.

“I was going to give it to you back during graduation, but I was hoping...”

The words _I was hoping Stanley would come back eventually to be here for this_ trailed off her lips and she fumbled with something in her pocket, something he suspected to be the golden-chained ruby pendant, the relic Stanley would have received alongside Ford _if he was still around_.

She unceremoniously dumped the blue-stoned pendant in his hand and curled his fingers around it protectively, before wrapping him in a tight hug. The faux-fur coat smelled a bit like cats, but he returned the hug anyways, letting his mother kiss him way too many times on the cheek before pulling away from her iron-bar-like-arms with a struggle and a muttered thanks.

(family was like that, he supposed, like a comfortable prison that you sometimes had to break out of, even if it meant leaving the once-secure metal bent out of shape in your wake, because sometimes life had to be lived, even if the warden’s intentions were pure)

He walked her to the taxi, kicking a rock in front of him with each step to distract him from the sentimentality his mother was exuding through clandestine sniffles and glances in his direction. When they finally got to the cab, he opened the door for her, and a few beats passed before she moved to climb into the backseat, her knuckles white as she clutched her purse, but not before landing yet another slew of kisses on his forehead.

“You be good. Alright, Stanford?” She offered a watery smile through the open window as the driver grumbled impatiently.

“Of course, Mom.” He surprised himself with the way the words scratched at his throat on the way out, wearing away at the dam of emotion building in the back of his mind for the last four months. “I’ll be fine.” _He’s fine_.

They stayed there, still as statues, basking awkwardly in resonant silence, and they both knew they should say so much more, but the driver had already lifted his foot off the gas, and the words evaporated before they could climb into the open.

Stanford clasped the silver chain behind his neck, watching the taxi disappear around the bend.

_______________________

Backupsmore’s courtyard was an epicenter of movement and giggles and shouts and bodies of students colliding and revolving around each other in cliques and clumps like particles. The grass here was trampled into the mud, and anywhere a smudge of grass may have survived, it wouldn’t for long—not with the waves of freshman confusingly being herded to their respective dorms and appointments like cattle by the frustrated upperclassmen behind them.

Ford stood to the side, leaning against the miscellaneous brown patches on the iron gate. He was sizing up the cracked brick buildings that stood like ruins around him to the markings on his outdated campus map, fruitlessly trying to get his bearings.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a small black spider hover too close for comfort to his shoulder, and he let out a ridiculously high-pitched squeak, flailing his arms and gaining a nervous stare from a nearby gaggle of students. He cleared his throat and picked up the papers scattered in the mud, thinking to himself that this school was going to kill him, and _what if the bugs were venomous_ , and he wouldn’t be surprised if it were a black widow, and he almost _wished_ it were a black widow, because Jesus _fucking_ Christ was he dreading this, and the words _Stupid fucking school_ fit themselves into his mantra, right before the _Stop_.

He glared at the students, a scowl to rival his father’s gracing his lower jaw,

(it disarmed him how fluidly it had fit into his features, something about apples and the distance fallen from their relative trees, and the thought only deepened the scowl more)

and turned to walk between what he assumed to be the Language and Literature Building and what his map referred to as the Cafegymatorium. The wind from the courtyard whistled between the brick walls at either side of him, and carried hoots and shouts of excited students, the patter of feet, and an oily-musky-herby scent that invaded Ford’s nostrils.

(it smelled like the boys Ford’s mother would ask him to avoid, the boys who would sit behind Glass Shard High in groups of four or five with smoke wafting over their heads, tossing dirty looks out left and right like fishing lines and making an effort to look effortless to everyone who passed them by)

It was nothing like home, like Glass Shard Beach, with it’s empty expanses of sparkling sharp beachfront, the taste of salt thick in the air and — _Stop._ — calling for him over the shrill shriek of the seagulls and the crashing waves. Ford wiggled his toes in his bargain-store dress shoes; his mother had bought them for his first day of school— _Stupid fucking school—_ but they just felt stuffy and suffocating on the sixth toe of each foot.

(he almost missed the sensation of gingerly stepping barefoot on the shards of beer bottles that would wash up on shore, making bets with — _Stop._ — to see who could take the most steps before chickening out and slipping sandals over the thin cuts on the bottom of their heels, and the winner was almost always — _Stop._ )

Ford stopped on the other side of the building, in front of a constellation of students, scattered in a field, hovering around a makeshift stage.

In the center of the glorified stack of boxes stood a boy in green with a red ascot tied around his neck like a noose. Painted on each cheek was the three-pronged peace symbol in deep red paint (it reminded Stanford of the BU brochure, of the miscellaneous stain, of blood, and the way the paint dripped down the boy’s cheeks was doing no favors.) The boy in green was barefoot, and bouncing from one end of the splintering stage to the next as he yelled, almost like performing a jig.

“Peace is the only answer!” Stanford was struck with the full force of the boy in green’s Appalachian accent, like he was born and raised from a jug of moonshine in bluegrass fields. The way the boy moved as he screamed, free and exuberant, like he was drunk on the attention from the thin crowd, only made the analogy more concrete.

“When the government stifles peace an’ love, it leads to young men going to Nam fer glory and coming back with bullet holes and stumps fer limbs!” Cheering and applause sporadically budded among the onlookers, and the boy in green took another step forward on the stage, encouraged by the applause.

“When the government stifles peace an’ love, it makes the boys who di’nt come back in body bags jealous of the ones who did!” The cheering was still there, but more muted as the gravity of the boy’s words permeated the atmosphere. _Death tends to be a buzzkill_ , Stanford observed.

“When the government stifles peace an’ love, they make a system where the only ones who can get peace are the lucky ones like you an’ me, the ones who can afford it, the ones biding their time in school!” The cheers had started to die down, and a guilty look plastered itself on the faces of the passerby. The constellation spread out, expanded like a mini-universe in the field, as students started to clear out. Nobody wants to be reminded of their role in ignoring a mess.

“When the government stifles peace an’ love, and _especially_ love, it forces people to fight fer it, to die fer it— an’ I don’t mean just on foreign shores, but on our own. I’m talking about riots like what happened in Detroit an’ Baltimore and _Stonewall_!”

Now, _**Stonewall**_ , that seemed to be the final brick in the wall, and the crowd began to dissipate almost altogether, with only a few stragglers resuming their cheering. And as the boy shook his head at the crowd’s sudden loss of passion, he shifted the yelling back to the war, which everyone universally seemed to despise, and the cheering presumed again.

But Stanford was still stuck in Stonewall.

Stanford thought of his father in June, and how he had been scowling in front of the television set, looking even more unimpressed than usual. “A bunch of disgusting degenerates,” Filbrick had said. “I’d rather have a dead son than a fag for one,” Filbrick had said.

(Stanford thought of Stanley, and how during the summer prior to that, he had climbed through the window in the dead of night when he thought Ford was asleep, smelling like booze and reeking suspiciously like the boys that hung out behind Glass Shard High.

(Stanford thought of Stanley, and how after an interrogation and a half, his twin had broken down because yes, he had been by the pier, and yes he did kiss that Latino boy who stank like leather and cigarettes beneath the boardwalk 

(Stanford thought of Stanley, and how _I can’t turn it off Ford I fucking can’t I’m sorry I’m trying I swear but I’m broken_ and _well try harder Stanley because dad would throw you out in a heartbeat if he found out_ and **not** saying that if _he_ could pretend to turn it off then maybe Stan could too— _He’s got personality_ —)

He’s torn away from the spectacle of the man (who reminded him of too much of blood and of war and of red), when he collides with one of the particles, one of the students, with a full frontal thud. Newly bought textbooks fall from the other student’s arms, splashing in a puddle of mud beneath their feet.

“Hey what the _fuck_ , asshole?” The student was a boy who couldn’t have been much older than Ford, but looked much taller and heftier, with a droopy mess of greasy blond hair giving him the appearance of an extremely wide anthropomorphic mop. The boy grabbed a fistful of Ford’s shirt by each lapel and drove him forward, until their faces were inches away from one another. “I just fucking paid for those!”

Ford made a show of visibly flinching away from the boy’s breath, and the student just pulled him closer with a glare. “I didn’t do it on purpose, come on—”

The boy shoved Ford away at his shoulders, curling his lips like he was touching something dirty. Ford balled his fingers into fists at his sides, trying to think of a reason not to drive a fist into the mop-boy’s face. _What’s the worst that could happen? I get expelled?_ The idea of not needing to go through with BU almost drove his fist forward into an uppercut, but then what? Go home? Scrape barnacles? Go to war?

“Ooh, a Jersey boy. Nice accent, asswipe. Well, since you obviously crawled out of some cardboard box on the shore, lemme show you some manners.” Before Ford could lift his fists, two other students, who smelled just as bad, he decided, materialized at either side of him, grabbed him by the shoulders and kept him in place; in their grip, he struggled to propel himself forward, to show this shitstain what those boxing lessons had taught him, to really punch that smug look off his face. He glanced at the circle of students quickly forming around the action. In the distance, worlds away, the protester was still screaming about war.

“First things first, you say ‘excuse me’ when you bump into someone. I dunno what kind of cheap broad your mother was to not teach you right from—”

Ford spit as hard as he could in the mop-boy’s face, the way his grandmother did to ward away evil spirits, and the satisfaction he earned watching the boy freeze in place, 50 percent in horror, 50 percent in shock, was immense to say the least. Ford smirked as the crowd around them fell silent, even as an undignified string of saliva fell from his bottom lip.

The satisfaction was ebbed when Mop Boy drove a fist forward into Ford’s gut.

“You mother _fucking_ — oh… what’s this?” Ford’s vision was still fuzzy from the punch, but he reeled back to lucidity when the boy reached forward to get a better look at the silver Hamesh still dangling from his neck. Mop Boy smiled like a snake and yanked the chain, snapping it from behind Ford’s neck. “Is this real silver? Wait— Jesus, are you a kyke or something?”

The hairs on Ford’s neck bristled at the phrase and a spike of fear rippled down his spine. “Give it back! Or I’ll—” Another punch was driven forward into Ford’s gut, and he heard a cheer yip out somewhere in the crowd among the collective gasps. Ford struggled against the lackeys at his shoulders, reaching forward as far as he can and—

“Fuck, look at this! You got extra fingers? Christ, what _isn’t_ wrong with you?” With that Ford mentally berated himself and tried to shove his fingers into his pocket, before anyone could see, but Mop Boy grabbed one of his wrists and lifted it gingerly, pinched at arm’s length between two fingers, as though it was a contagious condition, and showed it to the crowd. Ford felt himself go slack in the grip on his shoulders as a nervous chuckle or two rang out from the surrounding students, and with a flick of Mop Boy’s head, the boys standing at either side of him let go, let Ford drop at their feet, to splash in the mud.

Mop-boy glowered at the Hamesh with a predatory grin. “Well, this should definitely cover the cost of the books, thanks. And after all, this cool kyke necklace only has five fingers, so I’m sure it suits me better anyways.” He bent over and smiled in Ford’s face, making sure to hover close enough to see him flinch away from the breath, and ruffled Ford’s hair. Ford’s fists were shaking at his sides.

 _Stupid fucking school_ ran in an endless loop, fueling the anger that Ford had harbored in him since May, since his brother was turned on the streets, since West Coast Tech called him a waste of a car trip, since the only school that accepted him with a full ride was this _Stupid fucking school_. His fist was drawn, and he was about to stand up, about to try to punch this boy’s head in, about to _punch_ and _**punch**_ and _**p u n c h**_ until the boy’s teeth were scattered in the mud with his textbooks, even if it meant the lackeys at either side of him would kick him down before he got too far—

(and who cares if he gets expelled from this _**Stupid fucking school**_ , ‘cause _to hell_ with college, he’ll fight in the war in Nam, and maybe he’ll lose his stupid deformed hands and get those stumped limbs everyone’s talking about, or maybe he’ll fucking die there, because at this moment he can’t think of anything he'd rather have than to go as pointlessly as he came into this world, and he’s about to make ~~Stanley his mother his grandmother~~ his father proud, and he can’t fucking wait until they put him in the cold hard  ground, and he figures it’s a good thing he’s down because he’ll have to get used to being covered in mud, and he ignores the voice in his head that says—) _Stop._

“What’s goin’ on here, fellas?” Up close, the Appalachian accent hit Ford twice as hard, and from the floor he lowered his fist and glanced through the circle of students standing around the altercation, at the stage where a girl with cropped black hair had resumed the screaming in the boy in green’s place.

Because suddenly the boy in green was in the middle of the circle, staring down Mop Boy and standing expectantly between the two of them. This close, Ford could see the way the red paint on the boy’s cheeks has cracked in the sun, the sweat drops gathering on his forehead. Ford looked the boy up and down from the floor, starting from the Appalachian’s bare feet wiggling in the mud to his friendly face, where Ford could make out a single yellow canine tooth jutting out just slightly to the left in the boy’s otherwise pleasant smile, as though all the rural and unrefined blood in him manifested in that one out-of-place spot.

“Ah, Mcgucket,” the living mop sneered. “Looks like you took a break from your sick hippie bullshit to join the fun. My new friend Jersey here was just about to help pay for the books he knocked over. Ain’t that right, Jersey?”

Ford was shaking as he sat up in the mud. Was he being fucking saved like some defenseless fucking DD&MD damsel? Was that what was happening? He shrunk beneath the gaze of the student body. The fight probably had more onlookers than the protest in the middle of the field. He heard a student in the crowd giggle, and, if possible, Ford shrunk even smaller.

“I’m fine. I can handle it my damn self. I don’t need your hel—” he mummered at McGucket’s back with clenched teeth, but he’s cut off by the Mop.

“Oh yeah, you had me at the end of my rope, kyke.” Mop Boy shot a grin at Ford, at the mud on his clothes, at his balled-up fists, refusing to let Ford maintain even a semblance of pride.

“Now leave him alone, Erickson.” The accent in Mcgucket’s voice rang out among the crowd, but where Ford expected mockery or laughter, the students stared ahead, hungry for the situation to escalate.

“I know you have a thing for the pretty ones, Mcgucket, but you could do much better than this freak. Check out his hands.”

“Why’dya think I’m here just for him? Maybe I stopped by just to keep you company. I feel like it’s been a long time coming fer me to pay you a visit.” McGucket’s polite grin became a dark smirk and he placed his hands on his hips.

Erickson’s mocking tone quickly sharpened into something much more primal, something angry and harsh. “Are you coming onto me, fag? I swear to fucking God, if you are—”

“Oh please, I’ve seen pigs more attractive than you in the farms back home, Erickson.”

More giggles broke out in the crowd and Erickson sneered, arms crossed. “Well, you would know, McGucket. You’ve probably _fucked_ pigs back home, you inbred redne—”

The punch to Erickson’s jaw flied faster than lightning, faster than a seagull plucking a fish from the water’s surface, faster than Stanley diving from the pier— in the blink of an eye, Erickson was flat on his stomach in the mud, with McGucket clasping his arms behind his back and rubbing the fat boy’s face in the mud like a puppy being ground into his own mess.

The two boys propelled forward from next to Ford but Mcgucket shot them a look that could probably kill a wild bison with enough prolonged exposure, and the boys shirked back, watching their leader writhe on the floor as Mcgucket leaned forward to speak into Erickson’s ear.

“Never fucked a pig, Erickson, but I sure know how to wrangle one. An’ let me tell you, you are _much_ easier to get laid out.” He bent close and pulled the Hamesh out of Erickson’s hand, climbing to his feet and rubbing the pendant on his green shirt to get the mud out, before turning towards Ford and kneeling down. He offered the Hamesh with a bright (if slightly crooked and yellowed) smile, and an even brighter twinkle in his dark blue eyes.

“You alright, Jersey Boy?” His voice was gentle and a part of Ford knew he should be grateful, but a scowl was still planted on his face as he yanked the chain from Mcgucket’s hand, trying not to stare at the sweat, or the ascot, or the tooth, and _trying_ not to be angry but —

(no, Ford’s not even trying to hide his anger; Ford’s shaking and Ford’s furious because _Stanley_ was always the one who stepped in when the fights got bad, and Ford will be damned if he’s gonna let someone else do it. He wanted to not be suffocated, right? Then he needs to fight his _**own**_ goddamn battles and—)

— he felt the crowd staring him down, felt eyes on him, and they were tearing him apart, but he reached for the hand that McGucket had extended to help him up anyways, when he heard Erickson’s voice crack through the air like thunder,

“What is it, Jersey? Gonna hang out with the Fiddler? You’re a kyke _and_ a queer?”

(— his face is on fire and he’s gotta stop — _Stop._ — waiting for someone else to offer a lending [normal five-fingered] hand because he isn’t able to pull himself up by his own and just because he hasn’t got — _He’s got personality._ — a normal fucking brain, or set of hands, or any sense of self-preservation, doesn’t make him weak— _right?_ ) — _Repeat._

“I am _not_ a fucking queer!” The words came out harsher than a snarl, and he hoped they convince the crowd more than they convinced himself. He slapped McGucket’s outstretched hand out of the way, ignoring the bewildered expression and that stupid fucking tooth and the _not-blood_ blood, and walked right by Erickson (standing like he just won a battle despite being covered with mud and a fast-growing black eye), shoving his way through the crowd.

Ford made it to an empty bathroom in the Literature building before he broke down in the stalls, holding the Hamesh to his lips and wishing more than ever to be somebody, anybody else— someone who was fine.

Someone with personality.

_____________________________

Ford ignored the bruises (and the guilt) gathering in his stomach as he unceremoniously dumped the mud-caked duffel bags on the bare mattress, disregarding the cockroaches scattering away from their home as he started emptying the luggage out onto the bed.

“Mostly bug-free dorms, my ass,” he muttered. “The room is more bug than dorm.”

The dormitory was a ways away from the bathrooms he found refuge in earlier that afternoon, and the walk of shame past the student body in the direction opposite to the one he had fled towards after the fight had been a long one, passing by familiar faces of several students who had witnessed him fall in the mud, witnessed him be held down and punched, witnessed him get robbed of his pride and silver, witnessed him needing to be saved by some barefoot mountain-man.

But wait— he hadn’t _needed_ to be saved, he reminded himself, as he entered the near-empty dorm. He totally had it under control. One more second and Erickson’s gross greasy face would have been ground to dust. But, nope—now he was a Jersey rat, a silver-hoarding kyke, _and_ a wussy fag, and quite honestly, Ford could have done without the last one being tacked on with the help of McGucket’s swooping hillbilly rescue.

(and Ford felt in his heart that this useless fucking pride was probably what had forced Stan home every other night with bloody knuckles and a split-lip-smirk and swelling bruises that transformed his face with galaxies of purples and greens around his eyes — and while he never understood it before, Ford now realized that Stan’s fights were about _**more**_ than just inconveniencing him to drag out the first-aid kit, **more than** slipping loose change from the register on the sly so he could get peroxide without his father finding out, **more than** _What are you gonna tell Mom if she cries again I don't know what I’d do with myself Stanley,_ **more than** _why can’t you ever just ignore them when they say these things instead of throwing left hooks around I know you’re capable of ignoring them hell you’re ignoring me right now_ , **more than** _I hope you fucking won Stanley because if Dad found out you lost a fight you’ll get even worse from him and I can’t mend bones with just a first aid kit_ , **more than** _Jesus St_ anley _you’re gonna get yourself killed_ , **more than** _Jesus Stanley why do you act like you_ _ **want**_ _to get killed_ —

(that it was about something **more** , something deeper, something that Stan had deep in him that Ford now realized laid dormant behind his own stomach as well, that had awoken with the slammed fist to his gut and the hand wrapping itself around his Hamesh, and that he’d **die** before he let this new part of him wither away)

Ford grabbed the toiletries, and walked towards the bathroom, pointedly looking away from the dark ominous mold making its home on the shower walls, opting instead to look towards the toilet as he unloaded his soaps, sponges, combs and razors into one of the two bathroom cabinets. On the way back to the bed, he stomped out any cockroaches that defiled his path, bouncing on one heavy boot to the other to the beat of his mantra: _He’s fine_ (Stomp—Squish) _. He’s got personality_ (Stomp—Squish) _. Stupid fucking school_ (Stomp—Squish) _. Stop_ (Stomp—Squish) _. (Repeat.)_

When he got back to the bed, he picked up the complimentary bug spray and liberally coated the walls and floor around his bed, unprepared for the _audible_ scampering of cockroaches he heard fleeing. Were there really that many, or was it all in his head? The answer was _don’t think about it_ , and Ford tossed the bug spray aside and focused all his energy towards picking out a sweater vest and shirt to wear to the orientation, scheduled to start in under an hour. As Ford yanked clothes off the mattress and shoved them into the drawers of a bedside dresser of rotting wood, he unearthed two small photographs that flitted from the pockets of one of the jeans onto the mattress.

He knew the photos were generally in his mother’s safety lockbox in her room, and he hadn’t seen them in years. He thought of her offering to help him pack the previous night and snorted— what did she think was going to happen? That he’d see the photos and suddenly his college chances at WCT wouldn’t be ruined, that he and Stan could waltz around the betrayal of a lifetime for the rest of their lives?

The first photo was old and thin, featuring two young boys on the helm of a shipwrecked sailboat (possibly with pirate ghosts or Mesoamerican gold) proudly displaying the sunburns and freckles etched into their puffed-out chests and ready to take on the world forever, for as long as the world lasted, not knowing that the world they knew would crash and burn a month after their 18th birthday.

The second photo was newer, but not new by any stretch of the imagination. One brother had his arm looped around the neck of the other, in front of the backdrop of doting parents (or as doting as their parents could be). The boys worried about next to nothing, still clinging to the dreams of a rotten sailboat on New Jersey shores making it out in one piece, neither of them able to guess that they were merely a couple years away from getting out of Jersey themselves, their dynamic duo in shambles.

Ford glanced at the other side of the room, empty and bare but for a rotting bed and dresser identical to his own, and a part of him was glad that BU had given him a roommate against his will, and excited to see who might show up later in the day; he decided he was sick of half-empty rooms.

__________________________

Orientation had been as underwhelming as Ford had expected it, with Backupsmore not able to exceed expectations even in this. He had spent the entirety of the conference in a creaky seat, squirming uncomfortably whenever he felt the ghost of an itch of the scampers of little legs, or worse, the sharp bite of tiny mandibles.

He was placed between a girl with a pig-like nose wearing an obnoxiously bright tie-dye top, and a man whose beard reeked with the same general air of disappointment as the rest of the campus, listening to the heavy, boring drone of the dean, who it seemed believed in the merits of the school even less than some of the students. Ford found himself distracting his mind with glances of the photographs from earlier between the speakers’ half-hearted remarks of the school’s luxuries, including but not limited to:

  * Three vending machines, not a single one of which worked

  * A “highly-vigilant security team” comprised completely of a single 98-year-old deaf man who had been sitting there with his hearing aid turned off, snoring near the stage of the auditorium.

  * Working bathrooms (they no longer had to use the outhouses three blocks away—Hooray!)




Overall, Ford had to at least concede that his day hadn’t gotten any worse after a horrible morning and afternoon, so he cashed in his winnings and headed back to his dorm, eager to meet his new roommate.

There were three flights of stairs between the front door of the Werce Building and Ford’s dorm. Midway through the second flight, the scent of strong pot hit him full force, and he had to fight through the odor, thick in the air. At the third flight of stairs, he was positive it was coming from someone on his floor, but when he approached his own door and pulled it open, he hadn’t been expecting to be punched with the brunt of a thick fog of his hot-boxed dorm.

A groan had started to formulate on his lips, but when he saw who was sitting in the previously empty bed, surrounded by a mess of empty pizza boxes and DD&MD figurines, the groan died before it could enter the smoke-choked air. Lying there, muddy bare feet and all, was McGucket, looking just as unhappy to see Ford as Ford was to see him.

“Oh,” they both said in unison with the same tone of disappointment, before glaring deeply at one another as though offended at the other daring to utter the same syllable.

“What are you doing here? Aside from turning my dorm into a crime scene through your use of illegal substances, of course.” Ford’s eyes narrowed at McGucket, who simply took another puff of the joint still lit in his hand before stretching and sitting up against the wall.

“Well, this is my dorm, Jersey.” McGucket said, rubbing the end of the joint into an ashtray at his side before glaring up at Ford. “I would think that much is obvious. Just in case, though, what’re _you_ doing here? Aside from _still_ being ungrateful, of course. Oh, _and_ a narc.”

Ford crossed his arms and stayed his ground. “I’m sorry I didn’t expect to come back from orientation to” he coughed on his next words, seemingly for emphasis of his point, “to _this_.”

“By _this_ do you mean the weed or me specifically?”

“Both, really.”

“Gee, you’re polite.” 

“I guess we can just send in a request for a roommate switch, right?”

The eyeroll McGucket shot at him him was earth-shattering. “We’re never gonn’ get our rooms switched, genius. BU doesn’ work like that.” He swung his legs over the bed and nimbly leapt to his bare feet, an imprint of his bottom still sunk inches into the mattress, and started walking towards where Ford was rooted to the ground, fuming. “You ’nd I are stuck in this room together ‘til summer, an’ nothing is gon’ change that, short of one of us murdering the other— an’ even in that case, I’m sure you’d have to bunk with the body unless yer willing to pay to get it removed.”

McGucket paused in front of Ford, standing almost exactly level in height, his tumultuous blue eyes meeting Ford’s starry brown. “You’re stuck with me, Jersey boy.”

Ford crossed his arms, baring his teeth in scowl that might as well have been plucked from his father’s face. “I have a _name_.”

“And I couldn’t possibly care less. Look, I don’t know who the _fuck_ you’re so angry at, but it sure as hell shouldn’t be me. I did you a favor.”

Ford’s arms shook against his chest as he snorted. _I have every right to be angry_ , he didn’t say, because it wasn’t true. _I know exactly how I should be feeling_ , he didn’t say, because he wasn’t sure. _I know_ _ **why**_ _I feel this way_ , he didn’t say, because he didn’t want to contemplate the honesty of the words. “I had it under control.”

“I know.”

“And now everyone thinks I'm just some skinny Jewish Jersey freak, and—wait, what? You know I could have taken him?”

“Hell _yeah_ , I do,” he said and Ford’s head tilted owlishly as McGucket leaned back on the bed again to out a sparkling laugh that bounced around the room, off Ford’s ears, off the thin-walls, off the cockroaches wriggling unseen in the drywall like stars in a daylight sky, and off the jagged yellow tooth hugging the side of McGucket’s smile. “You shoulda seen the look on yer face. Was like a rabid _dog_ , I tell ya! I haven’ seen a man with that look since my uncle Joey found out the pastor’s boy knocked up his daughter Patricia — that there was a quickly-planned wedding, lemme tell you. But yeah, you were ‘bout to rip Erickson to shreds faster than a wolf in a henhouse. You’re sure-as-hell skinny, and sure-as- _fuck_ Jewish, but that don’t mean Erickson didn’t escape an early grave today.”

T“If you knew I had it, why’d you step in?”

“You gotta wait your turn, Jersey boy!” McGucket raised an eyebrow and smirked over his shoulder in Ford’s general direction as he fidgeted with a figurine on his bed-side dresser. “I’ve had a fixin’ to punch Erickson right in his fat _stupid_ face for a semester and a half. I’ve been letting that anger fester in me a real long time, because revenge is best served cold, ya know. and I’ve been biding my time, waiting for the boiling to stop, formulating the perfect plan to make sure he never wants to wake up again, when I look over, and see _you_ , some spanking new freshman who hasn’t even unpacked his bags, about to maim, if not _murder_ , the object of my loathing. There’s a long, long line of people who Erickson and his buddies have made miserable, and frankly, I’d blow Nixon before I let some fresh meat who’s been here for all of five minutes kill him before I get my chance.”

Ford sputtered indignantly. “What does it matter? If you had a problem with him, then does it really matter who gets to do it, as long as he gets his ass handed to him?”

“You tell me, Jersey Boy. Does it? After all, you seemed mighty angry with _me_ for doing it for _you_.”

At that, Ford sat on his bed, his ass sinking through the mattress against the bed frame, with his shoulders raised to his ears. He wanted more than anything to let out a frustrated whine—he didn’t really have a right to be angry at all, did he? McGucket seemed to pick up on the way Ford’s anger whittled down to nothing in a fraction of the second it had taken for the embers to burst into hot flames; all that energy, unable to be redirected, was fizzling out and dissipating, and it was truly a sight to behold. The hillbilly let out another chuckle before speaking again.

“At any rate, you should be glad. Like I said, I did ya a favor. Erickson’s dumber than the son of a slab of concrete and a pebble, so I wouldn’t be too worried about _him_ , but he’s still got a whole slew of buddies who jump on his say-so. There’s bound to be a pretty little target on my pretty little ass fer a hot minute an’ a half. It’s just a shame I had to settle fer just punchin’ him an’ holding him in the mud. I could’ve done that whenever, you know? But quality revenge?— _Whoo-wee_ , that takes time to plan.” McGucket let out one last chortle of laughter, replacing the figurine back on his dresser, before a thick and uncomfortable silence filled the room.

Ford sunk even deeper into the mattress, his feet hardly touching the ground, as though the mattress had more give than a hammock. Still, he tried to be comfortable, leaning his head awkwardly against the wall, only to wince when he felt the collision on the back of his head and the side of his face where a bump was swelling from being dropped in the mud earlier. A righteous anger flared again in the pit of his stomach, like the reminder of the events of that afternoon had the flammability of gasoline, and the mantra recycled itself, kickstarting again with the newfound energy. Because _how dare he_? (And Ford wasn’t even sure who _he_ was, but how _**d a r e**_ he? Was it no one in particular? Was it everyone and everything he had encountered since bothering to wake up on this miserable, muddy, pest-infested day? How dare Erickson, how dare McGucket, how _dare_ this _Stupid fucking school_ , how _**dare**_ Stanl—)

“There’s some ice in the freezer, you know.”

Ford roused himself from his thoughts and struggled with the mattress to sit up and offer McGucket a questioning look. “Hmm?”

“Ice. You know?”

When Ford’s only response was silence and confusion, McGucket tossed back another monumental eyeroll for the history books before bouncing off the mattress and towards the kitchen. While mumbling something under his breath about _stupid freshman_ and _stupid Jersey_ and _stupid doe-eyed pretty-boy twerps_ (so quietly that the words were stuck in a vacuum between McGucket, the roaches and God Himself), the hillbilly grabbed a couple items from the small freezer, before slamming the door shut. In seconds, McGucket was gliding back across the room in his bell-bottoms and bare feet, stopping and kneeling before Ford (still sitting awkwardly and twiddling his thumbs on the bed) before placing a small ball of aluminium foil into Ford’s idle hand and none-to-gently shoving a sandwich baggie of hard ice against the fastly growing bruise on Ford’s cheek (leading to a high-pitched yelp from Ford and an exasperated sigh from the hillbilly pressing ice-cubes into his skin).

“Well, I ain't holding it in place,” McGucket said, after a beat of silence, and when Ford looked up at him, blankly and dumbly, McGucket grabbed his six-fingered hand to hold it against the bag of ice, not letting go until Ford caught the message to keep a grip on it.

“Jesus, are you concussed or something, Jersey? Just hold the ice there ‘til the swelling goes down,” he said, letting go of Ford’s hand and adding a slightly-quieter (but not too quiet to be heard) mumble of “fucking Jersey moron.”

Ford nodded numbly, trying to ignore the bite of the ice on his skin as the bruise slowly, but surely, stopped throbbing. “You didn’t have to,” he muttered back, not meeting McGucket’s expression slowly relaxing into something softer.

“Well, we’re gonna be sharing a room for the school year, right? I know that murder option is still on the table, but I’ve seen you angry, and that doesn’t seem like it’d be a pleasant way to go.” At that, Ford’s frown stretched into a thin, dry grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, before quickly rolling back into a frown of confusion at the cold aluminium bundle in his hand.

“And, uh, what’s this?”

McGucket snorted and started walking back to his bed before collapsing to lie on his back with a grunt. “It’s a twice-baked ‘tater. My momma made them for breakfast this morning before I drove out here and insisted I take the whole batch. There’s plenty left over, and I figured you should eat something after that incredible ass-kicking earlier today. Normally I’d tell you to toss it in the oven to heat it up, but the power’s off in the dorms until tomorrow morning, because in case you haven’t noticed, Backupsmore sucks ass. The ‘tater’s probably not frozen completely through, though, and if I know my Ma’s cooking, it’ll taste great either way.”

Ford hadn’t even thought about food since that morning; between the cyclone of feelings furling in his chest and the life-altering move across states, hunger hadn’t exactly been a priority. Still, once McGucket had mentioned it, his stomach came to life, rumbling against the butterflies hovering in his abdomen; while still keeping one hand dutifully against the ice on his head, Ford unwrapped the potato, unfrozen but chilled, and took a bite to find it was stuffed with sour cream and cheese. He practically groaned with delight when he swallowed the bite down.

“Not bad, right?” McGucket looked smug from his side of the room, but Ford couldn’t muster up the nerve to be bothered by it, instead opting to take another huge mouthful of potato goodness, to the hillbilly’s amusement.

“Ma’s twice-baked taters are always perfection. They go better with bacon, but with the power out—”

Ford deadpanned, swallowing the creamy bite in his mouth. “You literally watched me eat shit an hour ago for being Jewish.”

“Oh yeah. I sure got my foot in my mouth. So you, er, what’s-the-word…. You, er, _kosher_ then?”

“Keeping kosher is part of being Jewish,” Ford said pointedly, looking at the ceiling.

“Is that a yes?”

When Ford responded by shoving another bite down his gullet and avoiding eye contact, McGucket gasped once more and jumped to his feet.

 

Mcgucket cackled at Ford’s uncomfortable squirming. “So you're not, huh. You’re a bad Jew!”

“Well don't go around _saying_ it. If my mother knew I wasn't  kosher she’d _throttle_ me!”

At that McGucket stopped his laughing and solemnly nodded, throwing Ford for a loop. “You, uh, you’re not going to laugh at me? For being scared of my mom?” the freshman asked, hazarding a glance up to meet McGucket’s face, which was almost comically somber.

“Nope. If there’s one thing I know, it’s not to cross someone’s momma. God knows a threat from mine is as serious as a heart attack. I’d chance walking into a lion’s den, or even into a ring with you when you’re as angry as you were earlier, over crossing her. So how’s ‘bout this—I won’t mention yer bacon, if you don't mention my bud.” McGucket jerked his head towards the ashtray and gave Ford a wink, and the atmosphere settled into something much more palpable as the freshman regrettably ate the last bite of the potato, before another thought suddenly entered his mind.

“Wait a second. If the power’s out, how do you have a running electric refrigerator?”

McGucket’s stormy blue eyes widened into excited navy galaxies and he rushed to the kitchen. “It’s actually an invention of mine! A self-charging electrochemical power cell!”

Ford’s attention went from grieving the loss of his potato to the implications of McGucket’s words in a millisecond, and dropped the ice and rose to his feet, practically leaping after McGucket to the fridge. “Self-charging? But how do you rebuild the zinc’s mass after the ionic transfer to the copper plate?”

As if working on the same wavelength, Ford and McGucket yanked on the back of the fridge simultaneously, and peered inside at the power cell keeping it running.

“Well, I charge the porous barrier to replenish the zinc for the transfer, of course.” McGucket sounded like he was trying (and failing) to hold back his own pride, and honestly Ford was bursting at the seams at the sight of the machinery.

“But how?!”

“It was easy. Here you see I had generator hooked up the barrier, keeping it perpetually charged with the energy it gets from—”

“Moses above, is that a _perpetual motion machine_?”

“Yuppers! Like what you see?” McGucket buzzed with excitement but stopped when he noticed that Ford’s excitement had come to a halt and become a contemplative humm.

“I actually made one of these babies myself back home,” Ford said, hand on his chin and thinking deeply— _don’t think about Jersey don’t think about WCT don’t think about Stanl_ — “And y’know, McGucket, I think you can make this more efficient.”

“No way, Jersey Boy.” McGucket’s prideful energy had come to a standstill, narrowing into a competitive smirk, as Ford went back to his dresser and pulled out the blueprints for his own perpetual motion machine from the Glass Shard High science fair.

“Read it and weep, Bluegrass.” With a victorious leer, Ford tossed the rolled up blueprints over to McGucket who then raked over the calculations slowly and let out a low wolf-whistle.

“Damn, Jersey. This is quite a hunk of metal you got planned here. When you’re right, you’re right. I could get _way_ more charge out of this baby.” McGucket glanced up at Ford with a raised eyebrow and a toothy grin, his yellow tooth glaring like gold. “Whatchya doin’ in a shitpile like BU? This is some West Coast Tech-level stuff”

Ford’s proud victory mellowed down into a ruefully bent posture, and he glared at his shoes. “Well, you know. Shit happens.”

“Shit happens?”

“Shit happens.” It was said with a sharp finality, and McGucket chose not to question it further, scanning the blueprints deeper as the tension thickened around them, when Ford decided to break the silence.

“So, what about you? Your power cell is definitely too impressive to just be cooling potatoes in your fridge. Why didn’t _you_ get into West Coast Tech?”

“Who said I didn’t?”

McGucket had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing at the way Ford sputtered, eyes wide with a face somewhere between shocked and angry. “You got into _West Coast Tech_?”

“Yup.”

“Yup?” Ford was definitely angry, McGucket mused. Angry and resentful.

“Yup. And those hogswaggling white-collar gold-trimmed small-dicked fake-liberal mother _fuckers_ wouldn’t know genius if it vibrated in their asses and blew them.” McGucket smiled as Ford let out an indignified snort, so he continued on.

“Trust me, Jersey. It’s just an expensive circles of white boys reaffirming every good thing they’ve ever heard about themselves. They call the place a school, but honestly, the only thing people learn there is how not to break their wrists jerking one another off.”

"So what— you got accepted but turned them down _on principle_?

At this it was McGucket’s turn to snort. “Oh, _no_. I’m not an idiot. I _absolutely_ enrolled. I mean, Momma raised her baby with principles, but she didn’t raise an _absolute blathering moron_ with principles—it’s West Coast Tech! No one turns down West Coast Tech! It’s the best college in the country!”

Ford started to sober up a bit at that, but a smile still quirked at his lips. “So what happened? Why are you here?”

“Well, like you said, shit happens. I _may_ have started a fire or two.”

This was news to Ford, who shook his head, trying not let out another bout of laughter as McGucket continued.

“Or three…. or four...., or really it might have been _seven_ , but—”

“ _You accidentally started seven fires at West Coast Tech_?!” 

“But it was for a REALLY good cause, I swear!”

“What cause could possibly be good enough to start _seven fires_ at West Coast Tech?!”

“ **Science** , of course!”

They stared at each other for a moment, Ford bewildered and McGucket challenging, beforeboth crumbled into a fit of laughter, and it resonated deeply in Ford, a warmth bouncing around inside his gut in a way it hadn’t since— _Stop._ —had left. Soon the laughter subsided, and McGucket reached into his drawer and pulled out another joint and a misshapen lighter, seemingly one of his own creation, that flickered on near-instantly with a press of a button. Ford’s eyes hovered toward the clock on the wall, and McGucket’s gaze followed.

“You gotta be somewhere?” The hillbilly stretched out, turning on his side and facing the freshman, looking content as a lazy cat, yellow tooth like gold in his smile.

“Yeah, I gotta get my textbooks before the shop closes. I only got 30 minutes.” With a groan, Ford unfurled from the mattress, rising to his feet, and grabbing a fresh outfit that didn’t smell like weed before going into the bathroom. Through the door, Ford heard McGucket speak.

“So, Jersey Boy. I wouldn’t mind getting your name now, now that we’ve confirmed that we won’t kill each other.” _Yet_ , the air whispered silently between them.

“Oh, uh, it’s Ford.”

At this he heard a chuckle that probably went on a bit longer than the already-stoned McGucket had intended. “Nuh uh. _You_ can’t be Ford. _I_ go by Ford.”

“Really?”

“Yup. short for Fiddleford, and I ain’t going by Fiddle. D’you got a longer name we can use?”

“Um… Stanford, actually.” Ford heard a sigh of relief from outside the bathroom, but his own fingers tightened on the top he gripped in his hands.

“Good. then you could go by Stan, and then—”

“ _No_.” The curtness and abruptness of Ford’s anger surprised both of them, and he felt his shoulders quake. With an exhale, he tried to salvage the atmosphere with a softer tone, pulling the new shirt over his head. “I, um, would prefer not to go by—”

“It’s fine. You can be Ford if you wanna.”

Ford strained his ears as he switched pants, listening for any passive-aggressiveness or frustrating on McGucket’s part. “Are you sure, McGucket?”

“Yeah.” A beat of silence went by as Ford pictured Fiddleford taking a deep pull from the joint. “I’ve been meaning for a change of pace anyways. I can go by Fiddle. Or Fidds. Who knows, maybe Erickson will get confused and I’ll lose the target he’ll inevitably paint on me. He probably has no object permanence—I wouldn’t be surprised if a new name threw him off.”

“Alright, Fidds.” Ford glanced at his reflection in the mirror—the swelling had gone down drastically since earlier that day; the ice must have really helped. “Thanks.”

“No problem, Jersey Boy.” Ford rolled his eyes at the giggling permeating through the door and then turned to the toilet. On the bottom of the bowl, he saw the image of a familiar face seemingly scratched into the porcelain. It had definitely not been there earlier when Ford had unpacked his toiletries, meaning it must have been keyed in while Ford was at the orientation ceremony.

“Uh, Fidds?”

“Yeah Ford?”

“Why is Lyndon B. Johnson’s face where we shit?”

A beat of silence.

“Oh, um.”

Ford waited patiently, staring at the watery likeness of the 36th president, the man who kickstarted the American involvement in the Vietnam War.

“Well, with all the shit we’ve seen come out of his mouth,” Fidds said, smile slipping into his voice, “I figured he’s probably into it... the sick fuck.”

Ford shrugged and reached for his belt as Fiddleford giggled through the door. He really had to go, and who was he to deny the former president of his needs?

_______________

Ford had returned to an empty dorm room after his overpriced venture to the campus bookstore. There hadn’t been a note, but Ford thought nothing of it. Who knew what a guy like Fidds could be up to after dark?

He stretched out on his mattress, fighting to find a smidgen of comfort lying down on it’s jagged protruding springs, before giving up on that and opting to sit up instead with his new book on nuclear physics open in his lap.

Well, “new’ in a sense, but he doubted the wrinkled (and somewhat sticky) pages were fresh from the printer, as he struggled to get a head-start on his reading through several ambiguous brownish-black stains.

But somewhere, nestled between the definitions and notes on the topological structure of spacetime and the Klein–Gordon equation, his mind was already racing through the stars, deep in thought in a sea of dust and ice, riding out the memories of the last couple of days, the last couple of months, on a rotten sailboat.

It had been a rocky adventure, he decided, subconsciously congratulating his second-mate, who looked a lot like him and wasn’t like him at all,  for making the sailing as smooth as it could have been, as they navigated their father’s belt and their mother’s deception, yellow rocks jutting out wildly to the left from the sea like teeth, and (for some reason) glowing golden slit-like eyes.

The daydreams fit themselves into his mantra, as Ford nestled into the mattress and the wall (ultimately deciding the wall was the more comfortable of the two, even with the faint scampering he swore he heard within it):

_(He’s fine. Jutting tooth. Schrödinger. He’s got personality. Appalachia. Stupid fucking school. Stop. (Repeat.) He’s fine. Barefoot. Relativistic quantum field theory. He’s got personality. Electrochemical Power Cell. Stupid fucking school. Stop. (Repeat.) He’s fine. Blue Eyes. Mass-energy equivalence. He’s got personality. Pot. Stupid fucking school. Stop. (Repeat.) He’s fine. War. Scalar electrodynamics. He’s got personality. West Coast Tech. Stupid fucking school. Stop. (Repeat.) He’s fine. Peace. Electromagnetism. He’s got personality. Miscellaneous stains. Stupid fucking school. Stop. (Repeat.) He’s fine. Angry. Feynman–Stueckelberg interpretation. He’s got personality. Joint. Stupid fucking school. Stop. (Repeat.) He’s fine. Not kosher. Phosphorescence. He’s got personality. Seven fires. Stupid fucking school. Stop. (Repeat.) He’s fine. He’s got personality. Stupid fucking school. Stop. (Repeat.) **Yellow slitted eyes** —)_

A knock on the door yanked Ford from his deep trance of thought, and he stretched his legs despite the protest of his knees and climbed to his feet. “I’m coming,” Ford called, glancing at the clock. It was 11 p.m. Fiddleford was probably back by now.

Ford rolled his eyes as he approached the door. “Fidds, it’s a bit late. Try to give me a heads up next time, alright. I—”

Ford’s words caught on the back of his throat as he tossed the door open, meeting Fiddleford in the doorway, in pain and struggling to hold himself up. Ford forgot how to speak. He forgot how to breathe. _Stop._

One of Fiddleford’s eyes—the raging passionate dark blue eyes— was swollen shut. The hillbilly was leaning against the door frame, still barefoot, heaving for breaths, with blood dribbling down his chin. The jutting tooth— the yellow, bright landmark of his smile—was missing, gone, knocked out of it’s place.

“Erickson… he…” Fiddleford’s words trailed off into a fit of coughing and dry heaving, and he bent over, struggling to find another breath as more blood dribbled off his lips with his drool.

Bending back upright, Fiddleford met Ford’s worried wide-eyed shock with a scared look of his own for less than a second before he collapsed forward, unable to hold his own weight, landing directly in Ford’s shaking open arms.

( _ **Stop.**_ ) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has been an ordeal to write. I probably won't have a consistent update schedule, but I will work on it as much as I can. It's my first GF fanfic (and my first fanfic in about a decade) so that's pretty cool.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, shout-out to @the-ford-twin via tumblr for editing and pre-reading this! You rule.


	2. Acid and Nebulae

As Ford tumbled to the floor with Fiddleford’s limp weight occupying his arms, his mind raced through the implications, through the possibilities, through the look of fear that flitted across McGucket’s eyes as he crashed into him, colliding like a comet into his peaceful night.

“Fiddleford? Fidds, I need you to tell me what happened, ‘kay?”

With a slight shake, McGucket’s good eye (the eye that wasn’t swollen shut beneath a myriad of heavy dark blue, already starting to scab and bulge) fluttered open, peering through thick eyelashes at Ford with an unfocused gaze. When he didn’t answer, Ford kicked the door closed with one foot and settled on the floor with the warm weight against him (it was unsettling when an egg wash of deja vu blanketed over him, because this wasn’t the first time he had to support someone’s injury-laden warm weight in the middle of the night, not the first time he had to dissect the cause of gruesome injuries from the shape and make of the bruises and cuts, not the first time he was left with a racing mind hovering over the possibilities: over shore-side fights with the boys in senior year, over midnight bouts in the community center’s boxing ring, over being jumped in the alley behind the school, over the suffocating _what-if_ s of concussions and internal bleeding, over _What did you do to piss them off this time, Stanl_ — _Stop._ )

“McGucket, I’m calling the cops.”

This shook Fiddleford out of his daze, and he started fast, like a branding iron was at his heels, his eyes focusing in mere seconds. “You can’t do that, Ford.”

“Why can’t—”

“Just please don’t, Ford. I swear, I’ll do anything. I’ll do absolutely anything.”

“McGucket, _look_ at you—”

“I’m _begging_ you.” The vivid desperation in the stormy blue ~~eyes~~ eye rocked Ford to his core, and he leaned against the dresser, the deja vu from before deepening, seeping into his bones.

He tore his stare from those ~~eyes~~ eye to assess the injuries in a mental checklist:

  * One (1) missing yellow tooth, with a rivulet of blood leaking onto Fiddleford’s green button-down shirt, splattering into a crimson colony on his chest
  * One (1) split lip, right where the tooth should have been, a poor substitute to the yellow that normally would occupy that spot
  * Several (?) bluish purple bruises, peppering Fiddleford’s complexion like patches of ocean and nighttime and violets, yellowing where stars should be
  * One (1) swollen shiner, a bulging pocket of a knuckle sandwich forcing the right eye completely shut, clenched closed like an angry fist
  * Ten (10) finger-shaped tracks along Fiddleford’s jugular, five on each side, each varying levels of deepening blue along a quickening pulse



Finally, Ford looked away, back into the determined eye of Fiddleford McGucket, and let out a sigh of defeat that left his fingers fidgeting against the floor. “Fine. But you need to tell me what happened.”

McGucket’s determination crumbled as he occupied his attention with the speckled ceiling. “Well, um, I fell down—”

“Fidds, I swear, if you tell me you got this falling down some stairs, I’m calling the cops and—”

“ _No!_ No. I got it. I um, well, I was walking back from my shift at the Wheel House and—”

“Wheel House?”

“It’s a mechanic’s shop downtown that work at.”

“Okay, go on.”

“Well, I ran into Erickson. But he wasn’t alone. He had company.”

The familiarity of the situation steals Ford’s breath, chokes him, turns the air around him into clay as his lungs forget how to work. “How many?” _How many, Stanley? How many guys were you stupid enough to take on at once? How close did you tiptoe to becoming a headline in the Glass Shard Gazette about a no-name Yid queer found dead in an alley?_

“6.”

Ford gulped and his gaze joined Fiddleford’s against the ceiling. “Fiddleford, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s not your fault, it just—”

“You shouldn’t have stepped in yesterday, you could have gotten—”

“It had _nothing_ to do with you, Ford. I swear. This is just par for the course when Erickson’s goons are involved.”

After a beat of silence, Ford met his ~~eyes~~ eye again with a heavy tone. “Fidds, we need to call the cops—”

“No! That’s the last thing I need. Ford, I can’t have people asking questions. I’ve got this.”

Ford swallowed his worry with a nod. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

They fell into a comfortable silence, neither of them wanting to move. Ford’s mind stopped racing with the full story, hovering in place over the turn of events, over the guilt settling deeply into the back of his mind like it was a newly bought condo, as he looked for a place to look—not at the eye, the stormy blue eye that seemed much less stormy than usual—not his hair, matted with dirt and mud and sweat and fear and—not the tooth, because it wasn’t there, because it was somewhere in the middle of the courtyard, stuck in the mud like the roots of a weed and—

“Why are you staring at me? It can’t be that bad, eh?”

“It really is, actually,” Ford muttered with no humor, before swallowing. “Well, um, your tooth. You see, it’s, um…..” he trailed off, gesturing towards the empty space.

Fiddleford filled the gap with his tongue, feeling around in what was now soft bleeding gums before letting out an angry groan and slamming his fist on the hardwood.

“That slimy prissy son of a _bitch_ knocked out Fiona!”

“Fiona?”

“My favorite tooth! Gosh _darn_ it!” Fiddleford stared at the ceiling in Ford’s arms, a calm pensive expression washing over him. “Maybe it’s for the best. Momma never could afford braces. At least my smile’s closer to rich-people straight as it’ll ever be.”

He shot a smile to Ford, who instantly evaded it, bouncing his glance downward towards Fiddleford’s shirt, to the scattered red splotches that were… _are they getting bigger_?

“Fidds, you—your shirt—you—are you _bleeding_?” Fords reached forward, but McGucket leaned away from the touch, shirking in his arms.

“I swear, Ford, I’m fine. I got scratched or something, don’t worry, just...,” Fidds rambled on, but his voice croaked the longer he talked, his words being spurred by _such_ an underlying desperation for Ford to not look at whatever was under his shirt, that Ford couldn’t stop his hands from reaching forward and splitting McGucket’s button-down to reveal what was underneath.

Ford fought to hold back a retch as he took in the sight:

Sliced into the canvas of large purple splotches wrought across Fiddleford’s chest were letters, carved into the skin with a pocketknife. They were large, angry red lines, still bleeding over the bruises, shaped to make out the words—

“Does that say... _Faggot McSuckIt_?”

McGucket stared at the ceiling like his fortune was spelled in the cockroaches skittering across it. “Well, um..” he began, avoiding the look of raw anger and disgust in Ford’s eyes. “Let no one say Erickson doesn't have a way with words, eh?”

When he returned his gaze to Ford’s and was met with a deep hurt, like the freshman had just been slapped, he instantly regretted it.

“You think this is a _joke_?” Incredulousness came out where the retch would have, and Ford’s finger wildly pointed at the cuts, at the bruises, at the red and purple and blues christening Fiddleford’s chest like a sickly twilight.

“I’m fine, Stanford. I swear I’m—”

“You’re _fine_ ? _Fine_ ? You call this _fine_ , McGucket? And you just weren’t going to tell me? Erickson slices you to ribbons, and you think it’s _fine_? You were just gonna sit here in a dirty sweaty shirt so this could fester? This could get infected! Look at these bruises! You could have broken ribs or—”

“I don’t have broken ribs. I know what broken ribs feel like, Ford, I’m sure I—

Ford’s eyes narrowed and something was stoked even brighter behind his eyes. “ _How_ do you know? How many times has this type of thing happened ?”

Fiddleford continued to evade the glare, crossing his arms over his chest before wincing at the contact and lowering them to his waist. The silence said it all: _Long enough to get used to._

“I’m going to murder him.” Despite the anger burning in his glare (steadily burning with a bright blue fire, blue like the bruises, blue like the low tide, blue like the swelling around a stormy blue eye), Ford didn’t _sound_ angry anymore. The statement wasn’t a threat from a place of rage or irrational impulsiveness. It was just a fact. He might as well have been reciting the recipe for meatloaf, or for perchloroethylene, or for mustard gas—it was just another thing he knew. “I’m going to murder Erickson.”

The calmness of Ford’s words, the cooling finality in his tone, sent a shiver up Fiddleford’s spine, and he reached forward for Ford’s six-fingered clenched fist, trying futilely to steady its violent shaking with a trembling hand of his own.

“No you’re _not_. You’re going to go back to bed, Ford.”

Ford made no motion to stand up, and Fiddleford found himself too tired to argue. He listened to the silence, to the anger buzzing in the freshman next to him, and after a few moments he heard a sorrowful sigh. “Where’s your first-aid kit?”

Fiddleford’s tongue froze for a moment when he met Ford’s eyes. The freshmen didn’t look heated or furious anymore. He just looked tired. The anger from before was nothing but embers now. Fiddleford didn’t like seeing defeat in its place, and he awkwardly elbowed Ford from the floor, with a poor excuse for a chuckle on his lips, alongside the split lip.

“Mr. Prepared doesn’t have one? You have 4 different copies of _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ on your bookshelf, but you didn’t think to bring a first-aid kit?” His attempt at a jab was met with Ford’s gaze dropping to the floor.

“Nope.” The word was short and curt, but it was also a lie. Ford _had_ thought to bring the first-aid kit, and he had also thought to leave it behind. He was never the twin who needed it, after all.

( _he was never the one who came home with split lips that needed to be stitched or crooked noses that needed to be set or the imprints of boxing tape and class rings bleeding into his cheek. That had always been— Stop._

_(Nope, Ford’s style had fallen more in line with rips, tears and gashes from stray belt buckles; dark, heavy bruises that lay waste to his back like strips of midnight on a sunburnt sky; shiners shaped like his father’s knuckles that never needed to be hidden or buried from Ma, because she knew where they came from with more familiarity than anyone else;_

_(and Ford had always gotten his fill of the reds and purples and blues from home—up until recently, he never understood why Stan went looking for more in the ring_ )

“It’s under the bed, Ford.... But I swear, I’m fi—

“If you say ‘ _I’m fine_ ’ one more time, I’m scraping ‘Dumbass’ on your chest, right there to match the rest. Shut the fuck up, McGucket.”

Despite the harshness in his tone, Ford set McGucket to the floor gently before pushing away on his knees and grasping the handle of a small white case marked with a faded red cross, lying amidst the clutter taking refuge beneath Fiddleford’s mattress. When he kneeled again at McGucket’s side, the hillbilly was already half-asleep, with the beginnings of gentle snores ebbing into his breathing.

A rapid series of slaps on his cheek brought McGucket out of his sleepy haze. “Come on. Gotta stay ‘wake, Fidds.”

After seeing Fiddleford’s eyes flutter open (only one eye, really—his right eye was still swollen shut beneath the bulging bruised upper eyelid that was little more than a purple bloated pocket of blood) and getting a confirming nod from the hillbilly, Ford picked out a clean black t-shirt from beneath the depths of Fiddleford’s bed. Nudging Fidds to hold it there above the cuts with pressure until the bleeding stopped, Ford climbed to his feet and grabbed from the kitchen a bowl of warm soap-water, a sandwich bag of ice, a roll of paper towels and a clean paring knife.

He sat back down cross-legged on the floor, and let out a sigh at the sight of Fiddleford hastily wiping away tears. The idea of salt getting into that black eye was enough to make Ford wince in sympathy, and he opened the first-aid kit to glance over his supplies before speaking.

“Can you even _see_ through that shiner, Guck?”

McGucket glanced to the side with an annoyed huff. “I got two eyes, Ford. It’s fine.”

“I thought you didn’t want people to ask questions. What’s gonna happen when they see you tomorrow?”

“I walked into a door.”

“Seriously? That’s the excuse you’re going for?”

“It was a big door.”

“Yeah, well, that swelling is ‘I got my ass kicked’ swelling, not ‘I walked into a door’ swelling. They’d have to be an idiot to fall for that.”

“It’s Backupsmore. It’s full of idiots.”

“Fiddleford. I can help.”

McGucket finally turned towards Ford, at the bag of ice in his right hand. “Ford, no ‘mount of ice is gonn’ get this to look pretty by tomorrow morning.”

“True.” Ford lowered his right hand and lifted his left, holding the paring knife.

At the sight of the kitchen knife, McGucket’s remaining open eye widened like a flying saucer, and he attempted to scamper backward, away from Ford’s arms; a tiny whimper of desperation escaped him as his hands scraped against the splintering wood of the hardwood floors, and he was pushed onto his back as Ford shushed him.

“Stay _still_.” Ford’s jaw was clenched shut, teeth gritting, as he held McGucket still on the floor, leaning over him. “I’m just gonna nick you. We gotta get the swelling down. I’ve done this before. Trust me, Fidds.”

After a moment, Mcgucket stilled with a gulp, his eye trained on Ford’s face, pointedly as far from the knife as his field of vision could get, and he only _barely_ shuddered when the tip of the knife pricked the skin below _Stan_ — _Stop._ — Fiddleford’s swollen eyebrow in a small cut.

Ford reached forward with a wad of paper towel, pushing it against the open cut as the bruise bled and the swelling reduced beneath his fingertips. After a moment passed with no sound except McGucket’s breath slowly evening out, Ford replaced the paper towel with the bag of ice, mumbling to Fiddleford to “Hold that there,” before turning to the cuts along the hillbilly’s chest.

The gashes were shallow and ragged; either the knife had been dull, or the one who sliced him had gone through the letters more than once. A sound of disgust escaped Ford as he looked away and went for the bowl of soap-water, soaking a clean rag.

He responded to _Stanl—Stop_ .—Fiddleford’s winces with breathy apologies and matching apologetic glances as he ran the soaked rag over the cuts, respelling every letter with a vicious sting to clean the gashes (stopping only for a second to marvel at the fluttering heartbeat beneath the _T_ of _McSuckIt_ ) before picking out the gauze strips and laying them in place like patchwork.

“Still awake there, Fidds?” McGucket responded with a soft hum and a nod as Ford continued to work, fumbling around the first-aid kit for a roll of tape. “You’re lucky none of these need stitches. I give the ugliest stitches in the world—they make for a much uglier scar than necessary.”

Fiddleford swallowed and spoke, more to the ceiling than to Ford, “I was, er, ‘fraid you’d wanna fetch out my good Kentucky bourbon to treat me—it’s the only alcohol in the house. It, uh, it won’t get infected or nothin’?”

“Nope, alcohol is used to sterilize equipment, not injuries like these. If I had dug some out, it’d just burn a lot. I really should’ve use it on the knife before I bled out the eye, but I think you’ll be okay.” Ford bit off a few expanses of tape and hesitated only momentarily before taping down the gauze against tufts of blond chest hair. He wasn’t going to shave his roommate’s chest in the middle of the night—they’d get to the bridge of yanking off the tape when they got to it.

They sat in resolute silence for a few moments after that, with Fiddleford’s stormy eyes focused calmy, much too calm for Ford’s liking, on a spot on the ceiling as Ford cleaned and placed band-aids on other various scrapes and scratches on McGucket’s knees and hands.

(It reminded him of making a makeshift operating room with Stan in Jersey out of the Pines Pawns bathroom, legs cramping against the cracked ceramic tile, speaking barely a decibel above a whisper as they stitched and wrapped and learned the best ways to get blood out of the laundry before their mother got to the hamper, about the fights and punches and the fits of teenage rebellion captured by the pier, about sitting surrounded by pseudo-sterilized pocket knives and their mother’s sewing needles still hot and clean from a few runs of a pocket gas-lighter and a dunk in their father’s scotch, about biting hard on a fist to keep from screaming when a shoulder was locked back into the socket, about twisting the knob of broken nose back into place so hard it almost unset last month’s break, about picking out glass and sand and rocks from a busted lip the best he could with his mother’s tweezers, about the fishing-line sutures Stanley did on himself always looking neater than Ford’s but knowing that when they were on his own busted hand there’s only so much you could do,

(about _Stanley you’re gonna get yourself killed if you keep on reacting to everything they say_ ,

about _no Ford they’re the ones who need to stop saying the things to begin with_ ,

about _but there’s more of them than you_ ,

about _you wouldn’t think that by the way they run once I get started and the way they look when I’m done_ ,

about _they’re not the ones who’re gonna need to hide a limp tomorrow at breakfast_ ,

about grimaces turning into dazzling charismatic smiles and the mutter of _I’m fine I’ll be okay_ ,

about fighting the urge to slap his twin in the face and _look at your fucking neck Stanley they would’ve knifed you_ ,

about _I’m sorry_ ,

about _there’s so much blood_ ,

about _I’m sorry_ ,

about _a hair deeper would have killed you you would have left me all alone did you even think about that_ ,

about _I’m sorry_ ,

about _look at your eye we’ll need to cut down the swelling_ ,

about _yeah yeah but look on the bright side I’m still the pretty twin_ ,

about _this isn’t funny Stan mom can’t see you like this again she just lost another baby you’re fucking killing her and she gets enough shit from Pa when—_ ,

about holding their breath when they hear their father get out of bed to grab a beer from the fridge,

about waiting for their parents’ bedroom door to close again,

about _I know Sixer I’m sorry but I’m not gonna just sit there and let them say these things_ ,

about _can’t you learn to ignore them_ ,

about _fighting’s the only thing I ever really learned how to do_ ,

(about ending the process with an embezzled shot of the scotch each before locking it back in the liquor cabinet with a bobby pin and heading to bed, about praying to a God that neither of them were sure they believed in that tomorrow their father would already be in the pawnshop by the time they got ready for school, about listening to Stan trying to find a way to lay down that didn’t irritate his angry injuries and—)

Fiddleford’s snoring shook Ford out of his daze and he took an up-down look at his handiwork. The guaze on Fiddleford’s chest was secure, the swelling in the split lip was reduced, the black eye had flattened out for the most part and the ice was doing it’s part to get some edge off the bulge, and aside from the splattering of bruises already fading from purple to green on his face and waist, he was completely patched up. With a sigh of relief he didn’t even know he was holding in, Ford shook Fiddleford awake.

“Let’s get you to bed, buddy.”

______________________

About an hour after fruitlessly rolling through the covers like a log in his bed, Ford realized that sleep was an evasive muse, and he tossed the blanket to the side and sat up in bed.

He pulled the textbook he was reading earlier that night from the stack on his bedside table, shining a miniature flashlight onto the page where he first left off, letting the post-hurricane calm of the room wash over him. His eyes wandered off the page to Fiddleford every few minutes, stopping at every other comma to watch the rise and fall of the patched-up chest, before grumbling to himself about _Stupid fucking McGucket_ and _Stupid fucking Erickson_ and _Stupid fucking school_. Even as he sat, enraptured by the text in the already-dimming flashlight’s glare, the day’s events buried themselves in the literature, and there was no escaping the insufferable recounting of the last 24 hours.

 _The universe may be an infinite ergodic construct—(Ma saying she was proud of me but looking as disappointed as ever)—containing Hubble spheres, a region of the universe surrounding an observer—(Thank fucking christ he didnt need stitches where would they have found fishing line in the middle of the night)—beyond whom objects recede at speeds faster than the speed of light—(Swollen shut, clamped shut, like the clams along the shore)—and realize all initial conditions. As such, an infinite universe contains infinite Hubble—(If Erickson avoided an early death yesterday, just wait until the next time I see him, I swear he’ll)—volumes, all with similar physical constraints and characteristics—(That tooth that stupid hillbilly redneck yellow fucking tooth sitting somewhere in the mud like a piece of golden trash)—In infinite space one would propose to find infinite universes echoing our own identically—_ A cockroach scampering across the pages—

“JESUS FUCK!” The book is tossed from his fingers faster as his hands jump on their own accord, and lands somewhere across the room. Instantly, he peered at McGucket, who despite the sudden waves of noise echoing in the room like the crack of a whip, had hardly moved, his snoring continuing uninterrupted.

With a pop of his back and a groan, Ford got to his feet, making his way to the textbook, now deep in the confines beneath Fiddleford’s bed. Cursing his lot in life, Ford gets on his hands and knees, reaching beneath the bed and blindly searching until he feels pages and pulls and— _Oh._

Dragged from the deep,dark cavern of the cluttered space beneath the bed, underneath the heavy cover of Ford’s textbook, is a magazine featuring on the front cover a— **_Oh._ **

Ford glances away for a full minute, contemplating just tossing his $40 textbook back under the bed, and buying a new one when he gets the cash, or dropping out of school altogether, before gathering the nerve to look down again at the beefcake magazine in his trembling hands (how did it _get in his hands_ ) and feeling his breath stop in its tracks at the sight of it.

On the cover, beneath the words _The Young Physique_ emblazoning the top banner, was a man standing before a scenic forest landscape, upright with a puffed-out chest, with muscles cascading down his body in ripples of curves and abs and expanses of clear skin, uninterrupted but for the _smallest_ triangle of navy blue fabric Ford had ever seen, barely covering a bulging crotch. _Sweet Moses._

The magazine shivered in his hands, but only slightly, and he glanced up at Fidds, who was still caught in the hold of a deep sleep, before turning to a fold-out centerfold in the middle of the contents with trembling fingers.

Exposed before him was a blonde greek god, or a demi-god at _least_ , draped across a lawn chair on his stomach, offering an aloof grin to the camera. There wasn’t an inch of fabric to be seen.

Ford was sweating a river as he turned the page, avoiding the photographs like his life depended on it, sticking only to the sidebars and captions, and the names of the photographers. Yup, he was just enraptured by the _photography_ , by the skillful lighting, by the third-structured composition of the photos, and not at _all_ by the skin and the muscles and the bare backsides and the warm bodies in ink and color, posing in every position—

Fiddleford let out a snort mid-snore and Ford instantly threw the magazine beneath the mattress, hands moving quicker than lightning as he grabbed the textbook and dashed across the room, back to the safety of his bed, safely away from the implications of the magazine being found beneath Fiddleford’s bed in the first place

(not to mention the implications of having picked it up, of having read the captions, having stared at the cover, of having possibly drooled a little, at— _Stop._ )

He layed on his back and stared at the ceiling, whispering to any supernatural or pseudo-scientific forces who might be listening.

“You are _not_ a queer, Stanford Pines,” he said out loud to himself, in the hopes that he’d believe it. “You were just…. Curious. Curiosity is fine. Good even.”

He fought his subconscious, changing the images in his head from the nude demi-gods to something less… well, less that. _Anything but that._

The image he was rewarded with was his grandmother in her Jersey apartment before she died, tutting away at him and spitting to ward off evil spirits. It seemed oddly fitting, and he calmed down, less afraid of himself, lulled into sleep by Fiddleford’s even breathing.

______________________

The next morning, Ford decided, was much brighter than it had any right to be, and a strong smell wafted through the air; it was heavenly in every respect.

He sat up, ignoring the glare of the sun that was shining directly onto his pillow ( _at least I have a natural alarm clock, right?_ ) and looking around the room, briefly nodding in a well-mannered greeting to the cockroach scampering on the wall to his left.

Last night’s events came rushing to the forefront of his mind faster than he could handle, and he dizzily placed his head in his hands.

“Mornin’, Sleeping Beauty. I was about to wake you up if you didn’t get up on your own.” Ford lifted his head to see Mcgucket, sitting at the kitchen counter with a plate of potatoes, in front of a miniature vanity mirror and a case of makeup. When Fiddleford looked away from the mirror, he caught Ford staring unabashedly at his face, at his bruises, or the lack thereof.

Where the swelling nebula of purple _had_ been, was now a clear stretch of perfectly clear skin, with barely a blemish to be found. In fact, the entire right side of McGucket’s face was bruise-free, without even a freckle in the milky complexion.

“Your eye! It, uh, it’s all better!”

Fiddleford laughed and gestured to the makeup kit before him. As Ford rose from the bed, his back popping resolutely, he saw that the kit was fairly well-used, a cheap Backupsmore brand, from the campus general store.

“Nah, Jersey. Just some movie magic. Hurts like a bitch, but I reckon I got it covered up enough to avoid any questions.”

“It’s all just _makeup_?”

Fiddleford shrugged and went back to smearing a beige cream to the left side of his face, burying the green and yellow bruises littered there. As he reached for a tan powder, he gestured toward the meal.

“The power’s back up this morning, so I was able to heat up the potatoes. Want any, Ford?”

Ford was nodding before the question was even finished, his mouth watering at the smell, and Fiddleford climbed out of the chair he was sitting on and opened the oven, letting the full force of the scent hit Ford of the cheesy potatoes toasting inside.

Fiddleford tossed a mischievous glance over his shoulder. “You know. I also happened to make a plate of bacon.” He gestured towards a plate of crumbled bacon bits, still dripping from grease. “I know you’re kosher-not-kosher, but would you like some?”

Ford opened his mouth to say no and roll his eyes, but then the _rest_ of the night hit his memories with the gentleness of a speeding truck—the magazine, the photographs, the lovely model stretched on the cover like a forest nymph, the tiny amount of fabric stretched over a very large—

“Yeah I’ll have some bacon, sure,” he said. _I’m already a sinner_ , he didn’t say. _In for a penny, in for a pound_ , he didn’t say. _Jews don’t have hell anyways_ , he didn't say.

He thought of his grandma shaking her head and tutting and spitting, but when the plate was placed in front of him and he took a bite of the salty-crunchy goodness, she suddenly got a whole lot quieter. He ate vigorously, grabbing mouthful after mouthful of the warm breakfast, like he hadn’t eaten in days, and he felt the stress of the last 24 hours begin to melt away.

When he looked up again, Fiddleford was placing his own plate in the kitchen sink, wearing a heavy sweater featuring the logo of the school team.

Ford raised an eyebrow. “The Aardvarks?”

Fiddleford looked back at him confusedly before meeting his gaze and glancing at his sweater. “Oh. Yeah. Gotta show school spirit,” he replied dryly, pouring himself a glass of water and sitting back down in front of his vanity mirror.

Ford stared at the logo incredulously. A misshapen aardvark was laying on it’s back,staring toward the viewer, it’s snout in the air and tiny claws suspended in perpetual jazz hands. “ _Spirit_?”

“Yup.”

“But it’s _Backupsmore_ . What could possibly be worth showing _spirit_ for?

Fiddleford let out a chuckle, wincing at the way it pulled at the split lip beneath a layer of foundation. “That’s the point. That’s why it’s funny. I’m making a _statement_.”

“It’s stupid.”

“It’s ironic!”

“Fidds, Backupsmore shouldnt even have a team. I don’t think they’ve won anything _ever_. If they did, it’d be the only good thing on their brochure.”

“Well I _never_.” Fiddleford fluffed a brush into a round container of bright neutral powder, lifting his nose in the air with a pose of false offense. “I, for one, believe in our fellow Aardvarks.”

“One, they’re called the Aardvarks. There is literally no animal less disappointing than an aardvark. Two, Backupsmore’s motto is literally ‘Hey, we exist.’ Forgive me if it doesn't inspire the utmost confidence in me for their abilities.”

Fiddleford dusted the powder on his nose before offering a pleading look at Ford. “Come on, man. Lighten up. You’re killing my high.”

Ford scoffed and walked towards his dresser to pick out a set of clothes that he hadn’t been wearing all night, before replying deadpanned, “Oh no. Not your perpetual state of stonery. Poor you.”

He ignored the bacon bit tossed into his hair with a chuckle from behind him, and headed into the bathroom to change. When he looked in the mirror, he shuddered at his reflection, at the dark circles making a home beneath his eyes, at the stress lines pulling on his face. _Holy Moses you’ve been here for one day and this school’s already going to kill you._

After staring into his own worry-ridden face, lost in pensive thought, Ford pulled his shirt over his head and called to Fiddleford through the door, “I don’t get it. You had the funds to go to West Coast Tech. Why did you choose Backupsmore as your back-up?”

“The name doesn’t say it all?”

Ford chuckled, but waited for an answer anyways, pulling off his trousers as Fiddleford spoke. “Well, if I’m being honest, my Nonna is in-state. She actually stays downtown.”

“Your Nonna? You mean your grandmother?” Ford raised an eyebrow and pulled a new pair of trousers up to his waist, listening intently and waiting for McGucket’s reply.

“Yep.” His voice had a heavier quality to it. “She actually stays at the hospital. She’s been sick for a while.”

“Sick?” Ford found himself thinking of his grandmother again, but not tutting or spitting, but withering in Glass Shard Hospice.

“Yeah. Lung Cancer.”

“Oh.” Awkwardness settled in as Ford opened the bathroom door to see Fidds no longer at the mirror, but facing the kitchen wall, clutching a wad of paper towels and sniffling.

“Yep.” In a second, the awkwardness dissipated, as Fiddleford bounced on his heels and turned towards Ford, a cheery smile on his face (the empty spot where the tooth should be his Ford like a train, but but he smiled back anyways.) “I’m actually gonna see her today around noon.”

“Really? You don’t have class then?”

“Nope. I’ve got my Calc class at 9, but after that I’m home free.”

“Who with?”

“I got Clark. You?”

“Emmit.”

Fiddleford let out a low whistle. “She’s a toughie, I’ve heard. Who else do you got?”

Ford walked to his bedside table and reached into a folder to pull out his schedule, handing to to McGucket by the vanity mirror. He smirked as an expression of surprise washed over Fiddleford’s face.

“This is a pretty tight schedule for a freshman,” Fiddleford said with a nod.

“Yup. It sure is,” Ford agreed, smiling wide.

“Who are you trying to impress, Jersey?”

 ~~Stanley _my mother_ **_my father_**~~ “No one.” The smile faltered and Ford picked empty plate of potatoes. “I just work well under pressure.”

“Uh huh. Sure.” Fiddleford handed the schedule back with a knowing expression, shaking his head. “I took a semester like that myself, Ford. Don’t burn yourself out.”

“I _don’t_ burn out, McGucket.”

Fiddleford nodded slowly, looking into Ford’s determined expression with a weighty one of his own, before turning back to the vanity mirror for finishing touches around his jaw. “We both got Avery for history tomorrow. I’ll see you there.” He lifted a challenging brow in Ford’s direction, and it was like Ford felt a kickstarted engine rev inside him, an insistent competitive streak screaming inside him.

“I look forward to it,” he replied curtly. “So what are you gonna be up to before you see your grandma?”

Fiddleford picked up the mirror and placed it in a drawer before sitting back down across from Ford. “Well, after Calc, I’ve got a meeting with my crew, and then I’m heading straight to the hospital.”

“Your crew?”

“Yeah. You saw them yesterday at the rally? We kinda just talk about things.”

“Things?”

“Things that matter.”

“Like the war?”

“Well, against the war, yeah.”

Ford's voice caught in his throat for a moment. “So you’re hippies.”

Fiddleford raised a debonaire grin and shrugged. “No denying it now, eh?”

The snort that Ford let out was astronomical, and he stood up with a newfound energy, sorting through his books to find the chemistry text. “If my father knew that I was talking to a hippie without punching his lights out, I doubt he’d ever forgive me.”

“I’d like to see you try,” the hillbilly replied with a chuckle, and a hefty silence settled in the space between them for a couple moments.

“So tell me about your crew. I mean, what do guys like you even _do_? Y'know, when you’re not stealing thunder from poor underprivileged, bullied Jewish youth in schoolyard fistfights.”

The snorting laugh that emanated from Fidds was crystal clear, and he _almost_ managed to not wince at the way it pulled at the corners of his bruised mouth. “Oh, Y’know _._ Just... _stuff_.”

“Really? Stuff eh?” Ford fought the urge to roll his eyes. “What kinds of _stuff_?”

McGucket’s voice took on a whimsical quality and he lifted his hands to waggle the fingers in front of Ford’s face. “All _sorts_ of stuff.”

Ford’s efforts ceased altogether, and his eyes start rolling on their own accord. “Seriously, anything specific?”

“We like to keep things vague, Pines.” Suddenly, Fiddleford’s voice dropped to a conspiratory whisper and leaned forward ever-so-slightly. “But if you want the general idea of what we’re going fer, make sure to check out the Administration Building tomorrow morning.” McGucket closed the makeup case with a resounding _clack_ and grabbed his backpack, starting for the door.

Mulling over the words, Ford grabbed his books, and after a moment of contemplation, lopped the silver Hamesh over his neck and tucked it beneath his sweater vest so the palm faced his heart, before walking out the dorm door at McGucket’s side.

“Why? What happens tomorrow morning?” Ford asked, bouncing down the staircase steps to catch up to McGucket’s stride.

“Absolutely nothin’. _Which_ , coincidentally, is exactly what you’re gonna tell the cops you know if they ask.”

“Cops? Should I be alarmed by that statement?”

“Not if you know absolutely nothin’.”

The boys stepped out into the courtyard, skipping over the pothole in the last concrete step, walking together towards the end of the sidewalk before they’d need to split ways to their respective classes. In the sunlight, the foundation burying the open cuts and bruises on Fiddleford’s face sparkled, but just barely. No one seemed to be responding to the shimmering finish, and Ford contemplated whether he was the only one noticing because he was the only one who knew it was there, or because he couldn’t keep himself from staring, specifically at the spot the tooth would normally grace.

(but maybe no one was looking because the image of Fiddleford McGucket shimmering in a splendid layer of foundation, strutting through the bright muddy courtyard of Backupsmore University, was such a common occurrence that mockery of the sight was rendered redundant)

  
“You’re really not giving me anything else to work off of here?” Ford asked as they crossed the courtyard in the shadow of the Administration Building looming towards the sky. “Not even a hint?”

“Sorry, Stanford.” McGucket smirked at the brick building that would become his canvas, stormy blue eyes wide and full of possibilities. “It’s a dark weird road I travel, and I’m afraid you cannot follow.”

___________________________________

Ford hadn’t even started his first class session at Backupsmore University, but the quota for the amount of rudimentary bullshit he could handle in a single day had well been exceeded, and his capacity to experience any more had all but overflowed.

His map was outdated and half of the campus was yet to be accounted for— not to mention he was fairly positive the cartographer had forgotten what direction “north” was, or what any of the cardinal directions were; the compass rose had been labelled “Est”, “Facing Pablo’s Ice Cream Parlor”, “Wiest” and “South-west” (with “South-west” facing what should be east.)

(Upon checking who had made the map, it was constructed by, of course, Mr. Pablo Remirez of Pablo’s Ice Cream Parlor. Ford made a mental note to never eat there on principle.)

After being attacked by a group of squirrels stalking the trash bins by the school gate waiting for lost children to ambush, Ford had found a wisened hobo named Greg, who smelled of nacho-cheese and wore a bright orange raincoat, and who was kind enough to point Ford in the right direction.

With Greg mentally added to the rapidly shrinking list of people he considered good in the world, Ford limped towards the his chemistry class (which was, for some godforsaken reason, being hosted within the Design and Architecture Building, on the opposite end of campus from the Science building), with his limbs riddled with possibly-rabies-infected rodent bites, and his wallet missing (Ford was fairly certain it had been the squirrels. Greg had just seemed too _nice_ to commit petty thievery.)

By the time Ford had opened the door to the chemistry lab, he was 15 minutes late to the session and dangerously close to dropping out and joining Greg for a life of homeless adventures with no responsibilities.

The class turned towards the open door as one cohesive unit, their eyes drilling into him, and Ford considered just turning around and leaving, when the professor, a bored-sounding balding man with more hair on his upper lip than in his fake toupee, turned towards him with a syllabus in hand.

“Mr. Pines, I assume? I am Professor Kramer. Class starts at nine, not 15 after. We’ve just gone through safety lab procedures, though I trust you’ll read through them yourself. We were just about to get started. Feel free to take a seat.”

Ford grabbed the syllabus from Kramer’s hand, ignoring the professor’s raised eyebrows at the extra finger, before raking his eyes through the present classmates. Upon recognizing a few them from the circle of students who had revolved around the scene yesterday in the courtyard (like buffalo outside a watering hole getting their fill of his humiliation like they’d die of thirst without it) Ford immediately stared down at the syllabus, only glancing up when he spotted the last empty seat in the classroom in the corner of his eye, placed next to a boy with greasy, mop-like hair and a predatory smile that—

_Oh._

Erickson grinned like a hungry vulture as Ford took the seat on the stool next to him; the syllabus was crushed at the edges in Ford’s shaking hands as he refused to make eye contact, feeling the heat of Erickson’s smug smirking face radiating to his right. As the professor buzzed from one table to the next, handing out hot plates and beakers, Ford doubled his efforts to read the syllabus, to ignore the angry thoughts bubbling at the base of his stomach and the red clouding his vision and the

 _welcome to chemistry 112 this course will consist of lectures once a week in the economics building and labs twice a week in the architecture and design building attendance is mandatory—(I’m still the pretty twin)—office hours are held monday mornings between 7 and 8 in the economics building in room number—(Momma never could afford braces)—as there is no emergency shower and eyewash station in backupsmore lab facilities students will be sent to the nurse in the event of a chemical emergency—(Fiona)—all students are required to wear protective safety gear and lab gloves—(Christ, what_ **_isn’t_ ** _wrong with you)—any and all late assignments will be graded with a zero regardless of—(McSuckIt)—Stop._

“Mr. Pines? Mr. Pines, are you listening?”

Ignoring the snickering from the seat at his right (which started sounding more and more like the squeal of a pig every second) Ford looked up to a very impatient-looking Mr. Kramer, with a set of chemical-beakers placed on the table between them.

“Um. Yes, Mr. Kramer?”

“Gloves, Mr. Pines. They’re necessary for this course.I don’t assume you have a personalized set of your own?”

Ford immediately shoved his fingers beneath the table, straining to shut off his ears to the giggles and whispers lingering in the air around him. He did have a customized set of gloves, hand-sewn by— _He’s fine_ —for their 16th birthday. He’d stumbled across them when he had been packing his bags for Backupsmore in Jersey, only to toss them away from himself like a venomous snake, to the bare bed across the room.

“No, sir. I don’t,” he muttered, before adding, much quieter, “I’ll just use a few sizes up. They’ll fit.”

“Very well.”

As the professor continued his hovering rounds from table to table, depositing beakers and vials, Ford aimed a pointed glare to the eyes closing in on him, praying he looked every bit like the rabid dog he hoped he was manifesting.

When the students turned away, he leaned forward in his seat, satisfied, and grabbed a pair of extra-large gloves from the box at the table’s end. The glove’s pinky finger was stretched over his distal-most two digits, so it fit snug around them, whereas the rest of the latex hung loosely from the remainder of his hand.

As the professor half-scraped/half-wrote the instructions of the reactionary stoichiometry lab assignment on the chalkboard, Ford stared forward through his goggles, repressing a shiver of fury as Erickson leaned over to speak to him, foul-breath and all.

“So, Jersey? Where’s your pretty necklace?” _Measure and record the mass of your clean dry evaporating dish and watch the glass._

The glare Ford offered in response did nothing to wipe the sneering grin from Erickson’s face, so he looked away again, staring at his badly-fit gloves, assembling the heat stand and electronic balance, and only fleetingly offering glances at the board. _Measure out 0.3 grams of sodium bicarbonate_.

“Aw, are you giving me the silent treatment?”

Ford winced at the breath against his cheek, hands shaking when he reached for the sodium bicarbonate for measurement, and hissing when some grains spilt onto the table.

“Come on, Jersey. We’re supposed to be lab partners.” _Obtain about a 5 mL quantity of hydrochloric acid in your small beaker._

As he poured the liquid from large glass canister into his beaker, Ford’s teeth were clenched with the effort not to scream, not to channel the anger broiling in his gut and slam Erickson’s face into the hot plate, not to make a scene like the _fucking_ ** _freak_** he was and— _add the HCl drop by drop to the sodium bicarbonate in the evaporating dish_ —

“If we get an understanding between the two of us, I’m sure we could be good friends.”

 _(Calm down Sixer, he’s just trying to get a reaction)_ — _reaction will be evident by the bubbling that takes place—(keep your cool and the class will pass over soon)_ —

“I dunno how things work where you’re from, Jersey”—( _with swinging leather belts and ocean salt and with hoisted sails and whispers of foreign gold wafting in the wind_ _and with two cogwheels created to fit together even if one wasn’t moving fast enough)_ he didn’t say— “but where I come from, if someone talks to you, you respond. You need me to teach you some manners again?”

_(Just breathe. Stop. Repeat.)— assemble the ring clamp and wire gauze apparatus for heating—_

“The least you could do is be polite, freak. You wrecked my textbooks, after all.”

_(Breathe.) — the flame should be adjusted to a lower temperature—_

“But maybe you need to be taught another lesson, eh, Pines? Maybe whatever shore-side whore raised you never really got the message of respect through your thick skull and—”

_(Stop.) — gently heat the solution in the covered evaporating dish with a—_

“I gotta admit, a few layers of mud really suited you.”

_(Repeat.)—continue adding HCl until the bubbling stops and all of the NaHCO3 is dissolved—_

“It looked better on McGucket though.”

_(Breathe.) — this indicates that the reaction is complete._

“ _Stop_ .” When Ford’s voice _finally_ escaped his brambled lungs, it was longer his own; it came out as an angry snarl, and before he realized what his hands were doing, the cannister of hydrochloric acid was jerked upward, splashing to his right.

Ford saw the scene play out in slow motion, but honestly couldn’t muster up the energy to bring himself to stop it.

Erickson **s c r e a m e d** , fists over his eyes, falling out of his stool to roll on the ground—Ford was reminded of a pig more than ever before by the squealing gasps— and as Erickson was shoved to a sink by another student, to bend over uncomfortably at a steel faucet and rinse the acid out of his eyes before it could do some real damage, Ford heard himself muttering something to the concerned professor about “he touched the hot plate and his hand jerked” and “it was a freak accident, poor Erickson,” and “God I hope he’s okay”, wondering ** _where the lies were coming from_** , thinking that he had _**never**_ lied that fluidly in his life, that **_maybe Stanley would be proud_** , and

“I’ll take him to the nurse, Sir.”

Erickson held wet paper towels to his eyes as he was yanked through the door, hearing the professor drone from the classroom about “that’s why we wear goggles everybody” and too distracted by the pain to see who was dragging him down the hallway, to feel the six-fingered hand gripping the sleeve of his shirt with fingernails still filled with yesterday’s mud.

There was an honest attempt made, on Ford’s part, to feel bad, to **regret** — _could have blinded him, could have scarred Erickson for life, could have gotten expelled if Kramer saw_ — but whenever something remotely similar to guilt began to crystallize in his breaths,— _but you know, Sixer, that the pig deserves it, that he’ll think twice before picking up another pocketknife as long as he lives_ —another voice, an angry voice, rough from one too many punches to the throat and smoking cigarettes beneath the pier and the sting of Jersey saltwater— _and Kramer was glued to the chalkboard, didn’t turn around until the_ _squealing_ **_screaming_** _started and anyone who saw you splash the acid would have also gotten a good enough look at your eyes to know not to mention it if they know what’s good for them_ — quelled what would have been repentance into cool justification, into— _McGucket’s eye, swelled shut and bruised with a nebula of purples, ruby words scraped with a blade into his chest, a missing tooth with blood where rural yellow had once been, blue stormy eyes that were suddenly too calm for your liking_ — the simple truth that there was **nothing** to regret.

The boys stopped in front of the nurse's office in an empty hallway and Ford waited for the paper towels to leave Erickson’s eyes, for him to peer through blurry sight at his surroundings, and for recognition to fall over his fat-ugly features.

Erickson glowered at Ford, but before he got a word edgewise, his nose was _cracked_ by the force of a six-fingered right-hook shattering through the air like lightning. And before he could crumble to the floor with legs of jelly, Erickson found himself prompted up by the same hand, held level to the brown angry eyes of Stanford Pines. 

“Oh, what is it Erickson? Suddenly have nothing to say to the freaky kyke?”

“Pines, if you lay a _finger_ on me, I’ll—”

His jaw was met with another blow but he was once again unable to fall to his knees, as Ford’s hand yanked him to eye level once more.

“Oh, you’re done talking? Good. Then it’s my turn to talk. I’ll keep it short.” Ford’s fist burst forward, directly into the soft flat of Erickson’s gut, and the boy doubled over, finally collapsing like a pillar of dry sand at Ford’s feet. “Stay **_away_ ** from us.”

Ford knocked on the door to the nurse's office before turning on his heels and coolly walking back to class with his balled bloody fists in his pockets, ignoring the croak of “I’ll get you for this Pines,” as Erickson rolled and groaned on the hallway floor.


	3. Burn Marks and Dildos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit shorter than usual, but it was hard for me to get back into the rhythm of things. I hope you enjoy it.

Ford woke up the next morning to his face burning.

The sun’s rays through the window were focused directly on his cheek, rousing him from a late but guiltless night of sleep, and roasting him in his cocoon of a blanket.

Out of the corner of his eye. He saw a cockroach scampering nearby, inches from his face. It halted for a second, halfway up the wall, as if to glance at Ford and bounce its antennae in a pleasant morning greeting.

“Morning to you, too, Sagan,” Ford muttered, nodding at the roach and finally resigning himself to wakefulness.

“He looks like more of a Tesla fella, I reckon.”

Ford turned towards the voice to look at McGucket, sitting at a stool near the countertop and hunched over a vanity mirror. The bruises around his eyes had started to fade dramatically, but not nearly enough to not need a slathering of foundation. The satisfaction of breaking Erickson’s nose echoed around in Ford’s mind, and despite the grogginess pulling every fiber of his being, he smirked before yawning with a start.

Ford hadn’t gotten sleep until, well, whatever time it was when his eyes finally shut last night after hours of him fighting weighty eyelids. He supposed it was somewhere between two in the morning and the sun burning his face awake.

And, he reminded himself, he was only up so late because he had just had his first biology class and still needed to meaninglessly pore through the book the teacher herself had mentioned he’d barely be using, and not _at all_ because McGucket had been missing once again last night with no note _no message no way of knowing he isn’t dead in a ditch or getting another lovely message sprawled on his skin or just hanging out by the boardwalk just looking for a fight because y’know stanley you really need to let me know before you start tiptoeing on turf that belongs to— Stop._

But here McGucket was, sitting by his mirror, and looking much more well rested than he had any right to be for a guy who had climbed back through the window at ass o’clock in the morning wearing a ski mask and covered with paint, without even the decency to look ashamed of himself when he saw Ford sitting in bed with a book, wide awake and scowling. And for what?

 _Things_ , McGucket had said. _Just some things._

“What time is it?” Ford asked, stretching his arms and rotating away from the over-bright window like a sunflower’s rebellious teenage son who’s convinced his sun-facing dad just doesn’t understand.

“We still got 20 minutes until history, Jersey, don’t worry,” Fidds said, tapping his brush to shake off extra powder.

Ford wasn’t even going to ask why Fiddleford hadn’t given him more time to get ready. He had fallen asleep in yesterday’s clothes, and they both knew he would shamelessly wear the same wrinkled sweater vest he spent the last three or so hours drooling on to class.

Wiggling his toes to avoid succumbing to slumber in the toasty confines of his blanket, Ford glanced again at the cockroach, still on the wall, basking in a ray of sunlight.

“I see what you mean, Fidds. Definitely more of a Nikola fellow.”

Naming the roaches was a newly declared convention, but one they both agreed was inevitable. They both had decided yesterday afternoon to give up the unconquerable task of killing all the bugs that had been bunking in their dorm prior to them both moving in — the roaches, after all, had been there first.

Not to mention, any living thing that managed to survive the heavy blanket of bug-killer they had sprayed on every exposed surface in the room (including the wall that dear old Nikola was standing on, getting a tan) clearly deserved a place in their apartment. Darwinism and all that.

 _The little guys really make the place feel like Backupsmore_ , Ford had admitted after they conceded to the unbeatable army. _Go Aardvarks, am I right?_

 _They’re still better roommates than some of the people I’ve been paired with_ , McGucket had said, opening a beer and propping his head against his palm as he stared at the walls with the weary look of a man defeated. _Not to mention I feel bad about the bug killer. I reckon using that much toxic gas against an enemy has got to be a war crime._

The first cockroach to be named, a shiny fellow named Newton, was currently skittering across the countertop near Fiddleford’s makeup, and he was making no move to crush it.

Ford watched Newton maneuver around the different palettes on the countertop until the cockroach settled next to a square of worn and well-used shocking blue eyeshadow.

“Does my face still look like it was used as a trampoline?” Fidds asked.

Ford tore himself away from the roach and the names and the blue ( _when did McGucket even use blue eyeshadow—he wouldn’t need that to cover up the bruises, right?_ ) to glance at McGucket’s face, flawlessly buried in an evenly blended layer of makeup, rendering the bruises invisible.

“Not a bounce to be seen,” Ford replied, swinging his legs over the mattress and shoving his shoes on.

“Well whoopdeedoo.” McGucket grabbed his textbook and tossed another towards Ford before starting towards the door with Ford close at his heels.

As McGucket locked the door behind the two of them, letting the silence settle in the cracks between their steps, he let out a long sigh and glanced at Ford.

“You know Ford, I’ve been thinking.”

“Well, that’s dangerous.”

“Shush. I’ve been thinking, and I was wondering…”

“Yes?”

“Ford, would you like to join my crew?”

Ford stops at the top of the third floor staircase, mulling over the concept. “Your crew.”

“Yeah. I must’ve mentioned them before.”

“The same crew you’ve told me next to nothing about other than that you guys do _things_ together.”

“Yep, that crew.”

With a laugh, Ford continues down the steps, matching Fiddleford’s stride as he contemplates the offer.

“No offense, but I don’t really know if I’d blend in well with your band of merry hippies, McGucket.”

“Well, what’s wrong with hippies?” Fiddleford asks, with a challenging look in his eye.

 _A lot_ , Ford thinks, flashing back to one of his father’s rare moments of talkativeness, when the man had spent close to two hours ranting on the lazy weak plague that _the hippie infestation_ was on this great nation.

“Nothing really, I just don’t think I’d fit in.”

“Don’t think you’d— Ford what do you think hippies _are_?”

“Do you want my honest opinion or my nicest opinion? Because you know I’m bad at social cues.”

As they turned the corner to the second floor, Fiddleford thought over his options. “I’d like you to blend the two if possible, but between the two options I’ll always take honest.”

“In my experience, hippies are just living manifestations of the grudges held against their parents.”

Fiddleford let out a guffaw and stopped to lean against the stairway railing.

“Well, Jersey, when you’re honest, you're honest. And if I’m being honest right back, I’d have to say, you’re not exactly wrong. I mean, there’s more to it, of course, but you’re closer to the money than you think. But that doesn’t really explain why you don’t think you’ll belong. Are you saying your parents are perfect?”

Ford thought of lying psychics and of hiding from leather in the pawn shop and of turning the blind eye and of diamond-spitting pressure and of being suffocated and never being impressive enough and of crushing sand between his toes and wishing he could be literally anywhere else and — “No. But I don’t hold a grudge.”

“You’re 18, Ford. Of course you hold a grudge.”

Ford rubbed his arm as they exited the front door out into the courtyard. “I dunno. Everything our parents ever did, they did for our own good, I guess.”

“Our?”

“What?”

“You said ‘our.’”

Ford’s eyes started veering off towards a crowd huddling before the Administration Building. “No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did. You said ‘our,’ like you got a brother or s—”

“ _Holy shit_ , McGucket, what did you do?!”

Ford stopped in his tracks, mouth gaping as McGucket followed his gaze to the Administration Building. Ford could practically feel the thrilling happiness rolling off McGucket as he spoke.

“Oh. You know. _Things_.”

 _Dildos._ Dozens —no, _hundreds_ — of dildos, glued and plastered to the front brick wall of the George. E. Hillsman Administration building. There were pink dildoes, green dildos, black and brown dildos, rubber dildos, glass dildos, plastic dildos and some dildos that looked like they were handmade in a pottery class. They were sprinkled across the building front, splattered randomly across every square meter of the 100 foot building like long, rubber goosebumps, glued in place with industrial plaster. Painted on the building in massive letters, the color of the American flag, was a simple message: **THE GOVT IS FUCKING OUR TROOPS**.

Amidst the laughing, pointing and shouting of the crowd of students flocking before the building to gawk at the display, Ford heard the an angry shout from the crowd.

“MCGUCKET?”

Fiddleford smirked, muttering to Ford, “Just leave this to me. Also, remember: you know _nothing_.”

“But I _do_ know nothing. How did you even—”

“Shhhhh— he’s coming.”

Dean Marson, whose office window was currently in the middle of bend of the “U” in “FUCKING” painted across the building in red paint, was storming through the crowd, shoving students aside with crazed furious eyes only for Fiddleford McGucket.

“McGucket!”

“Why, hello, Dean. How are you today?”

McGucket’s demeanor was quite even mannered for a guy about to be expelled from college for the second time, Ford observed.

“What is the meaning of this display, McGucket?” The dean gestured wildly at the Administration Building, averting his own eyes like the sight would taint him.

McGucket mused for a moment, turning towards the display and nodding.“Well Dean, interpretin’ art isn’t really my strong suit, but judgin’ by the articulate message painted in vibrant red, white and blue letters outside yer office window, as well as the numerous rubber phalluses, I’d reckon it’s alluding to the federal government of the United States of America sittin’ balls deep in the asses of the tens of thousands of young boys being shipped to ‘Nam every month. But hey, what do I know, right?”

Marson blanched at the words, stammering for a moment before refocusing his anger in a scandalized shout. “Of all the _disgusting_ —”

“Oh, I agree, Dean.” McGucket faced him again with a bemused grin. “It’s _revolting_.”

“McGucket!”

“Dean!,” he responded, with false scandal in his voice.

“When I gave your group permission to do your little protests I never thought you were vying for expulsion. I don’t know how you got this display up last night, nor do I care, because I expect all of you to be removed from this school by the end of this week, do you understand? This is the last time I’m turning a blind eye to your shenanigans— you’ve gone too far!”

Ford cleared his throat after the dean gave McGucket a second chest-poke. “How can you be so sure he did it?”

Marson turned and Ford felt himself shake. McGucket was shooting a glare at Ford that could easily be deciphered as _shut up and let me handle this_ , when the dean spoke. “Who are you?”

“Stanford Pines, sir. I’m Fiddleford’s roommate.”

“Stanf— Why, you’re the bright young student who wrote his introductory application essay on the dangers of marijuana use!”

Fiddleford snorted behind the dean, muttering almost indiscernibly under his breath, “Of course he did.”

“Yes sir, that was me.”

“Well, lad. You seem like a smart fellow, so I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that this is none of your concern. There’s no reason for you to defend McGucket’s actions.”

“You're absolutely right, sir. This display deserves the harshest punishment available.”

“Hey!”

Over the dean’s shoulder McGucket started pointing angry glares Ford’s way, and Ford ignored him and continued. “There is no defending these actions, but Mcgucket couldn’t have been the one to do it. He was with in his room last night. We were up late studying.”

“What?” the dean said, looking confused.

 _What_ , McGucket mouthed, looking even more confused.

“I can vouch for him, sir. He was definitely with me.”

“All night?”

Ford glanced at McGucket, who looked like he had just encountered the world’s most challenging crossword puzzle, before answering.

“Yes sir. He never left my sight.”

“I see.” The dean straightened his back and looked deeply at both of the boys, before McGucket said, quickly, “Well, we’re late for history. Come on, Ford, let’s go.”

Ford started following quickly behind Fiddleford when he heard the dean speak behind him.

“Have a good afternoon Pines. I hope you enjoy your time at Backupsmore. Don’t affiliate yourself with unsavory characters.”

Ford stopped to turn and watch the dean’s gaze fall squarely on McGucket, before shouting back, “Don’t worry. I won’t” and catching up to his friend’s side.

 

_________________________

The class itself had been pretty uneventful, which Ford was grateful for overall, and the two boys were now perusing their syllabi, stepping in sync across the muddy courtyard.

Finally, Fiddleford broke the silence like a glass barrier.

“You didn’t have to do that Ford. I mean, I appreciate it, but you really didn’t have to.”

“You mean when I stopped you from getting expelled?”

Fiddleford rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Are you kidding me? Marson’s wanted me gone for ages, but it’s not gonna happen.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Backupsmore isn’t exactly home to the country’s brightest and best, Ford. The board isn’t going to let this school drop the only person in the student body who was smart enough to get accepted into West Coast Tech. No offense.”

“Um? _Yes_ , offense.”

“Sorry, but just keep in mind that I can fight my own battles— _oh_ and speaking of fought battles…”

Ford followed the direction of Fiddleford’s head jerk and instantly felt a deep sense of satisfaction.

Erickson was leaning against the fence of the courtyard, glowering at Ford with such raw intensity it nearly burned. The skin on Erickson’s face was red and peeling in some areas, and heavy bandages were layered around his crooked nose.

Ford merely glanced in his direction and smirked when he saw Erickson bristle and turn away. ( _Good,_ said a voice that was familiar to Ford, deep in the recesses of memories of empty swing sets and splintered wet wood. _Because y’know, Sixer, your nerd books are great and all, and I’m sure they teach you a lot about creative solutions to frustrating problems, but sometimes people just don’t respond well to conversation, sometimes even if you have all the brains, you also need some punching_ )

“What happened to him?” Fiddleford said, staring at the silent altercation Erikson and Ford were having through exchanged looks.

“Oh you know.” Ford shrugged and continued a leisurely stroll towards his next class. “ _Things_.”

 

__________________________

 

Ford had spent his literature class with his fingers dancing idly against the side of the desk, ignoring a well-practiced speech the professor was giving from the podium about the importance of hanging on to every word she said “unless you wanted to fail a class at the 190th best university in the country.”

His fingers drummed a steady beat against the painted wood, and he felt his mind wander, felt his thoughts slip around Glass Shard  Beach and to sitting in the scorching sand and relishing the coarse heat.

(He thought of shoes that were too tight and sand that crumbled at the touch.

He thought of how the wet sand felt so much more different than the mud he was tossed in on day one of this _stupid fucking school._

How even if the boardwalk smelled like sailor’s breath, hairspray, and cigarettes, it was still better than the asphyxiating weight of the acrylic city air this far inland.

How even the conmen and shifty-eyed pocket pickers that ~~they~~  he would pass on the docks were preferable to the unfamiliar stares and wide-eyed counting faces of those who caught a glimpse of his hands.

He thought of how foolish ~~they~~ he had been to wish to be somewhere else, anywhere else, when he didn’t even consider he might need to do it alone.

He thought of late-night ravishing retellings of tales ~~they~~ ~~he~~ they both had memorized, of Jersey Devil and New England Chupacabras, of UFOs that were probably reflections cast from the glass Shard Lighthouse and howls in the night that was probably just the seaside wind rattling in a splintered old sailboat.

He thought of finding recluse in blanket forts and planning expeditions on the great blue Pacific, and finding Atlantean treasures and Atlantean technology — _and Atlantean babes!_

He thought of growing older, of handdrawn maps finding their way into shoeboxes under the bed, of homecoming dances, and Jennifer McCorkle stepping on his toes when he tried to hold her hand, how she didn’t even want to hold his hand, and how he hadn’t even wanted to hold _her_ stupid hand, because in reality she smelled weird and didn’t even know the capital of Russia, and really there were few redeeming qualities there, but _it would have been nice if someone  anyone if any of the_ ~~_boys_ ~~ _people here wanted to hold my freakish stupid hand_

And _don’t worry Stanford there are plenty of fish in the sea_

And _but you don’t get it Stanley I’m so tired Stanley I just feel broken out of place all the time Stanley_

And _trust me Sixer I might understand more than you think_

And _Stanley I just don’t belong anywhere_

And _Sixer, you’ll find your place one day. I mean, who knows it might be with someone out there, out beyond the ocean, waiting for when we take the Stan o’ War out on our expeditions_

And of guilt and of secretly knowing that sometimes dreams fall apart, that they crumble like sand, and of wishing things were clearer and of sand and of sand and of sand and of _yellow eyes_ — _Stop.)_

“Pines!”

He was startled out of the cycle of thoughts to find the professor in front of his desk, holding a ruler and looking quite predatory, probably thrilled to swoop down on a student not hanging on to the lecture like a lifeline. “What did I just say?”

“Um. That paying attention is important?”

The class snickered and the toothy smile on her face faltered. “Um. Yes. that’s right. Very well. Glad you were paying attention.”

After class, Ford burst out of the room, and met Fiddleford at the base of the stairs to their dorm. Their walk upstairs was quiet and heavy, with a silence the consistency of wet cardboard. Ford needed to head to the dorm to grab his calculus textbooks and Fiddleford had muttered something about taking a well-deserved nap and bouncing a couple of ideas off of Newton.

As he waiting for Fiddleford to finish wrestling with his keys to let them both in, Ford was startled by the sound of laughter from inside their room.

“Fidds, Fidds, I think there’s someone in there—”

Once the door swung open, Ford couldn’t help but curl his fist defensively, only to be met with the a choking cloud of marijuana smoke and the most non-threatening group of people he had ever seen.

“Guys!” Fiddleford walked in with a smile and open arms, as Ford sat in the doorway coughing and taking a look at their uninvited guests.

Sitting on his bed was a girl — _oh my god there’s a girl on my bed_ — with long blonde hair and a floral headband, leaning back against his pillows and humming and staring idly at the smoke drifting above her face. When Fidds entered the room, she swung her legs over the side of the bed with a renewed enthusiasm, rising to offer him a hug.

Offering a casual nod while sitting on a stool, and drinking a warm beer from the box Fidds kept beneath the counter was a blonde freckled boy with a jaw so sharp that — well, Ford wasn't the twin with an aptitude for yuck-em-ups, so he really couldn’t think of anything to ironically relate this boy’s facial structure to, but it was indeed a well-chiseled jawline.

Sitting cross legged and looking indifferent on the floor was a girl with black hair who looked vaguely familiar to Ford at first, and and then suddenly incredibly familiar once he caught sight of her six facial piercings, instantly recognizing her as the girl with a knack for recounting and recounting and recounting fingers that come in sets of six from his orientation enrollment.

And still, sitting in the corner and barely offering more than a smile when Fidds walked into the room was a small boy, probably the youngest of the group, hugging his knees and looking up with big brown eyes under a mop of messy black curly hair.

“Fidds, how did these strangers get into our room while our door was locked?”

The blond boy spoke up first, addressing Ford with the same passive-aggression he referred to the group with. “We came in through the window. Duh.”

“Oh that makes sense, through the _window_ ,” he said, in a tone of voice that suggested it made no sense at all. “Let’s see, how about this? Fidds, _why_ did these strangers get into our room while our door was locked?”

Fiddleford laughed and released himself from the vice-like hug of the blonde girl. “Ford, chill out. These guys are my crew. Guys, this is the one I told you about. Other Ford.”

Fidds pointed at the group one by one. “This here is Sarah”— he pointed at the blonde girl currently smoothing out her long green skirt — “Chad”—the blonde boy who was still scowling in Ford’s direction, a gesture Ford gladly reciprocated — “Vanessa”— she stayed in her spot on the floor, and Ford clenched his fist and shoved it in his pocket before she could steal a glance— “and Carlos” — the boy in the corner smiled miniscule at Ford and offered a wave. Ford’s eyes widened at the hand that was waving, a hand with only four fingers. Carlos caught the look and quickly hid his hands away.

Ford walked in and closed the door, crossing his arms and leaning against it. “Ah, this is a great first impression. Breaking and entering is the way to a guy’s heart, y’know.”

Chad rolled his eyes and leaned in towards Fidds, whispering as loud as he could, “Could we really trust this guy, McGucket?”

“Whoa!” Sarah approached Ford and took his hand without a moment of hesitation, shouting before he could protest, “Hey! This guy’s got six fingers! That’s something else!”

Vanessa smiled from her spot on the floor, “I fucking _knew_ it. Man, I thought I was tripping.”

Ford pulled his hand out of her grasp, shoving it back into the confines of his pocket, while Chad raised his eyebrows. “So you’re the one who splashed Erickson, eh?”

Fiddleford turned towards Ford in surprise, but Ford refused to meet his eyes.

“Wow, between you and Carlos, we almost have two normal-handed people, eh?” Chad asked.

“Shut up, Chad,” Vanessa said, still barely moving from her spot on the floor. “Leave him alone,” she added, though it was clear she was talking less about Ford than of Carlos, who was now sinking deeper and deeper towards the floor.

“No, I’m sure it’s cool, right Other Ford?” Chad walked over to Carlos, keeping his eyes glued on Ford, who made no move to respond other than thinking to himself how he’d rather be drowning right now.

“Any idea what I would do with a whole extra finger?” Chad asked, to a response of shrugs all around.

“Be the subject of your peers’ mockery for an entire childhood?” Ford answered, more to himself than anyone, muttering under his breath.

“Well, I could be about 25% more effective at fingering girls.”

The room collectively rolled their eyes, and only Ford cared to dignify the comment with a response. “One, nice math skills you applied there, Chad. Keep trying. Two, classy friends you got here, Fidds.”

Fidds only shrugged and sat on his bed, addressing the room at large. “So to what do we owe this visit?”

Vanessa finally rose to her feet, holding in her hand a typewritten letter. “Well, McGucket, we have a problem. I got this from the office.”

She handed the note to Fiddleford who perused it for a few seconds, his expression growing angrier and angrier, until he tossed the paper ball away. “Dag nabbit! This is bullshit!”

“What’d it say?” Ford asked, moving towards his bed to start collecting his textbooks.

“That asshole dean banned all public demonstrations for my group because, _supposedly_ , we vandalized the Administration Building.”

Ford turned to glance at the group. “But, um, well, you _did_ vandalize the—”

He was met with a resounding cascade of _Shhhhhhhh_ from all present members. Everyone in the room was offering conspiratorial glances at the walls, and Sarah rushed to the window to shut the broken blinds the best she could.

“What did I say?” Ford asked, grabbing his calculus textbook.

Fiddleford broke the silence. “Big Brother’s always watching, Ford. We need to be careful what we reveal to the world.”

“Big — what — Fiddleford, when I got back from biology yesterday you were cooking hash browns in your briefs with the blinds wide open.”

“The human body is a beautiful thing and it deserves to be free,” said Sarah in a wistful sing-song voice, smiling and nodding while Fiddleford gestured towards her, adding, “Right?! That’s what I said, but he won’t listen!”

“I’m not having this argument again, pants stay on, Fidds. And you guys could cool it with the Orwellian apocalypse rhetoric— Backupsmore’s one surveillance officer is 80 and deaf. I think you’re safe.”

“Ford, we can’t underestimate an establishment that commits this level of infringement on their student body.”

“Fidds, this isn't an insane response to what happened. You couldn’t have seriously expected no repercussions at all for this, right?” Ford asked incredulously. The moment the words left his lips he was met with angry glares from across the group.

“We didn’t think that far ahead, Ford,” Fiddleford said. “We were too busy thinking about getting an important message out there. Stifling us is a travesty against public educational system. I knew the dean was bad, but this…”

Fidds turns to the group, and all eyes tracked on him, like he was a captain at sea in rocky waters. “This means war, guys.”

Ford rolled his eyes and, calculus book in hand, made his way towards the door for his next class, muttering under his breath.

“I thought you guys were against wars.”

 

______________________________________

 

When Ford returned later that evening, Fiddleford was sitting alone on his bed, tuning his banjo. He shook his head at Ford once the door closed.

“The crew doesn’t like you, Ford.”

“Oh no. The hippies who broke into my dorm room by climbing through the window don’t like me? What a shame.”

“Ford, you shat all over everything we've worked on for weeks. Project D took a lot of planning and effort and thought. It was an eloquent and informative commentary on the treatment of young Americans and —”

“Was it, though?”

Fiddleford dropped the banjo and gawked at Ford with a gasp of offense.

Without missing a beat, Ford continued. “I mean, you guys glued dildos to a wall. Maybe you’re taking your little prank a little too seriously?”

“It wasn’t a prank, it was a protest!”

“With dildos.”

“It’s clever!”

“It’s juvenile.”

“It’s funny!”

“War. Isn’t. Funny.” Ford collapsed on his bed and faced Fiddleford , who was seething in his shoes.

“Okay, Ford I get it. What would you propose we do?”

“ _I_ don't propose you do anything. I am _not_ an accomplice to whatever you're cooking up.”

“Well, that sounds an awful lot like you’re proposing problems without solutions. So come on. How would you convey this? How would you make a difference?”

“I don’t know, Fidds. Just—okay—listen. Are you serious about this message?”

“Of course I am, damn it! Don’t you know how horrible this war is for—”

“Then make a serious message. Okay? That’s really all the help I could offer.”

Fiddleford’s burning angry expression melted away to something like clarity, and he bounced to his feet like rubber. “By gum, I think I got it!”

He sprinted across the room to the countertop, pulling our blueprint paper and graphing sheets, wildly flinging a pencil across the pages and muttering madly to himself under his breath,

“But how will we…. but the batteries…. I’ll need to see how much the helicopter costs… not to mention where I’ll find 200 sex dolls on such short notice….”

Ford decided at about that point that it was best not to get involved.


	4. Pesticide and Mysteries

As his calculus professor lectured from the front of the room, Stanford sat at his desk up front trying not to fall asleep, his head settled comfortably into the crook of his elbow.

The last week had been spent pointedly avoiding the _Misadventures of Huckleberry Fidds_ by shaking his head in disdain whenever Fiddleford strolled into the dorm close to midnight each night, smelling faintly of strawberries and silicon. The better part of his energy had been spent refusing to open what Fiddleford tantalizingly referred to as “the door of mysteries,” a closet filled with spare mechanical parts, along with whatever else Fidds needed for _things_

(and of course whichever _things_ those were was not _at all_ a topic of interest for Ford, _no-siree_. He had more important things to mull over, like preparing for his calculus exam and finding himself a job on campus, ~~and the slow-going transition to a life of resigned solitude after spending 18 years as one half of a pair~~ and the pursuit of future feats of unfathomable scientific discovery, and he wasn’t **_at all_** interested in juvenile schoolyard pranks, or vandalism disguised as poetic protest, or _dildos_ , or of any of the students of this _stupidfuckingschool_ , and he most definitely wasn’t interested in whichever harebrained plot was being gestated in the closet or mind of a _Mssr._ _Fiddleford Hadron McGucket_ — _Stop._ )

“Mr. Pines?”

His groggy head lifted off the desk as a painted fingernail rapped against it, and he glanced up at his calculus professor, who curtly nodded towards the board.

“Seeing as you know the material well enough to sleep, have you finished integrating the problem on the—”

“X plus Cos times x plus C,” he replied boredly.

The class turned to stare at him while the professor’s eyebrows raised. “Correct. Well done, Mr. Pines. I suppose you can resume your nap. Now, for the rest of you, who can explain his process?”

Five minutes later, the bell rang and the students stood as a monolith, their books and bags already packed, and started filing towards the door, passing by Ford as he sleepily dragged himself to his feet to follow.

“Mr. Pines? Do you have a moment?” Mrs. Clark called from her desk.

He considered saying ‘no,’ and instead following close on the heels of the last student already scampering out the door, but after a glance at her weary face, with eyes like daggers, he pivoted towards the desk and approached.

“Yes?”

He stood awkwardly, rocking onto his heels as she slowly evened out a stack of papers. She looked away, fidgeting with assorted knick knacks on the desk and rearranging writing utensils, so quiet he thought he might have misheard her calling him, but then she spoke.

“Mr. Pines, what exactly are you doing here?”

The frankness of it rocked him back to solid ground and his head tilted owlishly. He was quiet for a moment before answering, “Do you mean… in calculus class… or, like, in general?...”

She stood up again, towering above him and crossing her arms. “You have a gift. You’re leaving the other students in the dust. You shouldn’t be in Backupsmore, you should be in Harvard.” She sounded angry.

“I.. well, my family couldn’t quite afford—”

“There are community colleges. There are several public universities in New Jersey, many that are finer institutions, and even several cheaper ones. Why here?”

 _Because the reek of New Jersey might smell like home, but nostalgia makes me sick to my stomach_ , he didn’t say.

 _Because the idea of living close to that two-bit apartment above that two-bit pawnshop in two-bit Glass Shard Beach sounds like prison_ , he didn’t say.

 _Because no one can doubt me if I crawl out of a pit as low as Backupsmore and still manage to reach the stars_ , he didn’t say.

“It was just the best choice,” he said, absentmindedly rocking on his heels once more. He stared at his shoes, glanced at her eyes, and immediately stared at his shoes once more, avoiding the stare boring into him.

“Frankly, Mr. Pines, I hope you make better choices in the future. God knows you're smart enough.”

He glanced up again just enough to see her wave him away, dismissing him with a small frown, and he rushed back to his desk, piling his textbooks high in his arms and eagerly walking out the door.

As he power-walked down the hallway, swaying with the shifting weight of the tower of books in his arms, his brain bounced against the conversation, still running in his mind.

It had always been obvious that he wouldn’t land in an Ivy League university. No one, of course, had told him explicitly, the same way one never tells a child that they won’t be president.

But no one needed to say it — the patched-up pockets on hand-me-down jeans and the dented, donated boxes of toys stretched between an extra mouth to feed on twin-birthdays had always conveyed that, ingraining the impossibilities in him long before he ever thought of college choices

(but not before coming across a dusty paperback of _Planets_ and rolling around reverently in the footsteps of Carl Sagan, who had once been just another 18-year-old skinny Jewish kid in a shitty apartment, just a drive away from the beach pier Ford would grow up next to, and Sagan had been once been a nobody too _, so it wasn’t impossible to be someone, just improbable, an_ **anomaly** _, and being an anomaly was what Ford did best_ — Stop.)

His arm was yanked to the left, and his books cluttered the hallway around him, falling out of his grasp as he was pulled into a bathroom, just fast enough to notice the “out of order” sign plastered to the outside of the door. He fell on the tile floor inside, and the door was abruptly shut, flooding the room in darkness.

“Who—”

The switch was flicked and he was bathed in light, his eyes still adjusting to the sight of two familiar sneering boys at either side of him before he felt his hair pulled harshly and his head clang against the metal door of the stall.

His ears rang for a moment, mingling with snickers, and upon second sight of the towering boys, recognition placing them as members of Erickson’s crew.

“Hey Freak.”

In a flash of self-preservation, trained from dodging bullies in elementary school, he jumped to his feet, rushing to the door before a palm shoved him back against the wall. He threw a punch, but it barely grazed the shoulder of the boy to his left before his wrist was caught by the boy on his right ( _your form was never as good as Stan’s_ ) and he gave up the fight, his arm dropping fruitlessly at his side as the two boys continued their snickering.

“Aw man,” said the left, shaking his head to the tune of a gleefully sadistic smile. “How’d you manage to land a punch on Erickson anyways? You’re not that tough, are ya?”

“Oh, he’s a sneaky little ky—” Ford kicks forward, the knee digging upward into the gut of the boy on the right. He drew his leg back, preparing to kick again, but a sickening crack was heard as the boy on the left jabbed forward, a fist connecting to Ford’s nose and his head ringing once more as it collided with the tile.

“McGucket’s not here to protect you now, Jersey,” said Left.

“Yeah, what’s that hillbilly even see in these freaks?” the Right asked, his palm keeping a dizzy Ford pinned to the wall.

“No Idea. Like that wetback that follows him around like a puppy?”

“Maybe he’s got a thing for a freaky number of fingers.”

“It’s like he’s got a collection going.”

Ford wriggles against the stony grip on his chest, but stills completely when the eyes of both boys are trained on him.

“So how about this, eh, Pines?” the Left brandishes a pocket-knife and waves it in front of his face. Ford’s breath catches in his throat.

“We’re just here to give you a message,” said the Right.

“Yeah. And we’ll be sure to write it down for you so you don’t forget.”

( _bloodied letters in skin, galaxies of bruises_ )

Ford punched out again, feinting to the left and then swinging a right, hooking it to catch them both, before twisting out of the grasp and sprinting out the door. He ran down the hallway, looking back only once at the scene of the two boys laughing by the open bathroom door, surrounded by the books left behind on the ground.

 

___________________

 

When Ford opened the door to his room, his breath ragged and hands shaking, he saw Fidds sitting on a stool, leaning over three separate textbooks open on the counter, silhouetted by the sun streaming through the window as he scanned the pages and fiddled with his banjo.

Ford was lost for a moment, just staring at the way the sun reflected on Fidds’ flyaway blonde strands, making a golden halo around his silhouette as the banjo played like a harp. But then the strumming stopped and Ford was eye-to-eye with McGucket’s worried wide-eyed stare, and he only had the shame to glance away from the intensity of it before strolling to his mattress like his nose wasn’t broken, like violet rivulets of bruising weren’t already settling in the inner corners of his eyes.

“I fell down some stairs.” Ford said in response to the silence, only to glance back at Fiddleford seething in anger like a screaming kettle.

“Stairs, my ass.” Fiddleford muttered, putting the banjo aside to follow Ford, trying to get a better look at the damage.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Ford said, looking for the books for his next class before remembering with annoyance that they were still in the hallway.

“Oh, yes it is, Ford, it’s _worse_!”

“Fidds, they carved you up like a turkey and you were ready to dab it with scotch and call it a papercut.”

Fiddleford said nothing, just standing still and huffing with irritation. “Fuckin’ stairs.”

“Fucking stairs,” Ford agrees, before turning away towards the bathroom, muttering, “Gotta use the Johnson.”

Ford closed the door behind him, avoiding his reflection in the mirror, and headed to the toilet, nodding quickly in greeting towards Mr. President before lowering the lid and sitting down, placing his head in his hands, and exhaling shakily. The adrenaline was gone and exhaustion was setting in.

From outside, he heard the banjo strumming begin again and heard Fiddleford call out, “Tell me again why I’m not ‘allowed to make a death-bot?”

Ford rolled his eyes. “Aren’t hippies supposed to be all about peace? ‘Make love, not war?’”

“Somehow I don’t think makin’ love to Erickson is the answer here,” McGucket replied quietly, the strumming continuing.

Ford stood up, having gathered himself enough to garner a glance in the mirror, but froze at the sight of himself.

“Sweet fucking Moses,” he whispered.

“Told you it’s bad,” McGucket called from outside the door, and Ford dumbly nodded in response at his own reflection.

Blood was dribbling out of his nostrils and a cut on his forehead he didn’t even know existed, all over the lapels of his shirt.

Ford pressed a finger gently against one nostril and quickly recoiled from it, the tenderness almost causing him to abandon all attempts to assess the damage.

In his mind he chastised himself ( _don’t flinch, Stanley, we need to set this before it starts healing crooked_ ) and his fists clenched at edge of the bathroom sink.

( _It’s easy, we just gotta tent the bridge of the nose like this… and I’m gonna pull._

_Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Sixer?_

_Well, that’s how the book says to do it, how hard can it be?_ )

Bracing himself, Ford placed two fingers on either side of his nose, just where the harsh veering of the bridge began, counting backwards in his head to the second of setting.

5.

_(It’s not like they won’t notice a broken nose. Besides, it might make me look cool._

_Stan, it could impact your breathing. And Pa will kill you if we gotta spend money on a doctor visit.)_

4.

_(Alright. It just hurts._

_You were the one who went and got punched in the face. I wanted you to stay home.)_

3.

_(I couldn’t just let them say those things, Ford. This is our family we’re talking about._

_Yeah, well, our family is now minus-one unbroken nose.)_

2.

_(Yeesh, don’t grab it so hard._

_Stan, I’m barely touching it. Are you sure you’re ready?)_

1.

( _As ready as I’ll ever be. Just do it._ )

Ford did it.

“SONOFABITCH!”

The nose crinkled back into its home position, throbbing as blood rushed out of his nostrils. Ford grabbed tissue paper, wadding it and pressing it too his face, ignoring Fiddleford’s calls of concern from outside of the room.

After a couple of minutes, he walked out of the bathroom, bandages haphazardly tossed on the cut on his head and across the bridge of his nose, and collapsed on his bed.

“You alright, Jersey?” McGucket asked, still not looking up from the open books and still strumming.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you really? I called yer name for like a minute.”

“I said I’m _fine_ , Fiddleford,” Ford replied, agitated.

Fiddleford shook his head, still not looking up, muttering under his breath, “Well, no need to be an Angsty Andrew ‘bout it.”

Grumbling to himself, Ford got up to fill a cup of tap water, leaning over the kitchen counter. He stared at the books in front of McGucket, watching his eyes bounce from one book to another, between a study guide and the pages littered with messily-drawn chicken-scratch notes.

On the table, the textbooks look worn and wrinkled, even only after a couple months of classes, open to dog-eared chapters filled with highlighter marks and phrases underlined in pencil.

Ford glanced away from books when a flurry of movement caught his attention.

“Oh my God.”

Directly on the counter, inches away from Fiddleford’s elbow, Newton and Tesla were rolling around in what appeared to be a wrestling match.

 _Yeah, Ford._ **_A wrestling match_ ** _. That’s exactly what’s going on. Newton is pounding Tesla against the kitchen counter for_ **_a wrestling match_ ** _. Sweet Moses, you’re hopeless,_ said a voice in his head.

McGucket looked up and followed Ford’s shocked gaze to the counter where the cockroaches were frantically moving against one another, before shrugging. “Oh yeah, that’s a thing that’s been happening.”

Ford’s mouth opened and closed in a rounded, shocked, fish-like manner before he was able to speak again. “But… but aren’t they both male?”

“Well, they both have a pair of cerci and styli, so biologically speakin’, yes, but we can’t really know if they _identify_ —”

“McGucket, why the _fuck_ —”

“The cockroach heart wants what the cockroach heart wants.”

“Will you please take this seriously? It’s obscene!”

“Just let ‘em have their fun, Jersey. At least they’re doing it under our roof and not who-knows -where with who-knows-who.” Fiddleford said, not even looking away from his study guide, with all the air of indifference in the world.

“They shouldn’t be doing it at all! This is…. It’s _so_ …. _Wow_ , he’s really going for it huh? How long has this been going on?”

“Two hours, ‘bout.”

“ _Jesus_.”

After a second of marveling, Ford shook his head, standing taller with a huff, and grabbed his textbooks, shouting a loud warning.

“Newton? Tesla? You two better stop. I’ll crush you, I swear it!”

The cockroaches continued.

“Okay…..” Ford gulped, lifting the books even higher, allowing just another moment before shouting again.

“That’s _it_! You asked for it!” Ford pounded the textbooks hard against the counter, a couple inches away from the display, with the intention of making the two roaches scatter, but still they continued, seemingly with even more vigor.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” Ford said to McGucket. “They called my bluff.”

McGucket looked away from his textbooks, stretching. “Yeah well, I s’pose once you name a feller they start feelin’ safe. In any case, you should just let Newton have his fun. He’s had a busy day.”

“A busy day?”

“Yup. We spent all mornin’ training.”

“Training?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Fidds, you can’t train a cockroach.”

“Well, I done did it, so that’s obviously not the case. We’ve been working all day on it. Whenever I whistle a song by the Rolling Stones, Newton will start walkin’ towards me.”

Ford tried to contain a skeptical snort, but obviously didn’t do a very good job of it, because Fiddleford’s smirk reeked of a challenge as he hopped to his feet.

“Alright, _ye of little faith_. Watch this.”

Fiddleford made a big show of taking a deep breath before whistling what Ford recognized as the first few bars of “No Expectations.”

The roaches made no efforts to stop, and Newton looked as enraptured as ever in his actions.

“Um.” McGucket furrowed his eyebrows. “One sec, lemme try a different tune. Sometimes he reacts to different albums with a bit more vigor.”

He whistled part of “Backstreet Girl” but the only change was a change of positions, as Newton flipped Tesla around to continue with even an even stronger flurry of movements.

“Nice, Fiddleford. Just _nice_.”

“Ford, I don’ need yer sass. You know, he’s prob’ly just tired from training all day.”

Silence settled between the two of them as Newton moved even faster.

“Oh yeah, Fidds. He’s fucking exhausted.”

“Ford, this roach can do amazin’ things if you just—”

“Oh, I think Tesla agrees with you on that one, Fidds.”

“Ford, I’m serious!”

“Me too! Shit, hum a few bars of ‘Sweet Caroline,’ and he might give him a lap dance.”

“Oh, whatever!” Fidds collapses on his bed in frustration and Ford sighs at the cockroaches and shakes his head before speaking again.

“Didn’t we cover that table in pesticide?”

“Yeah, I think they’re usin’ it as lube.”

“Fascinating.”

 

___________________________________

 

Ford had planned to be in bed by midnight, but between the impenetrability of his mental block and the stress of the coming midterm exam, he found himself still awake with a filthy textbook in his lap, eyes flitting at the clock marking 1:57 a.m.

Fiddleford had left hours ago — after a call from the hospital his grandmother was staying in, he had rushed for a visit with mutterings of “gon’ be alright” repeating on loop under his breath, still pausing at the door and crossing himself with a small prayer before rushing down the hallway.

The subsequent silence and the deafening lack of banjo strumming in the meantime was only able to tear at Ford’s mind for a couple of minutes before he rushed out of the dorm as well, heading back to the hallway outside that bathroom to retrieve his books.

Luckily, he only had to walk half the distance before he found them. Unluckily, when he found them, they were opened and lying in the mud, page-down, soaked to the spine.

And so, there he sat on the bed, his eyes straining as he attempted fruitlessly to derive any meaning from the stained, smeared browned pages of his textbook.

Though, admittedly, he had given up on it an hour ago, at least subconsciously, as the humming curiosity emitting from the closet door on Fiddleford’s side of the room beckoned to him.

The door of mysteries.

If this had been any other door, Ford would have tossed it open by now, taken in the contents for the half-second needed to satiate the curiousness of his snooping mind, and been done with it.

But this was Fiddleford’s secret door, named specifically to fuck with Ford. And Ford had already decided weeks ago, back when his resolve was stronger, that he wouldn’t humor the baiting naming conventions of _Mssr._ _Fiddleford Hadron McGucket_.

The chipped paint of the door started to look more and more inviting with every passing moment and in between reading the words of his textbook, he found himself looking up at his reflection in the doorknob, at his own raised eyebrows and general expression of annoyance, because he could _see_ the curiosity in his own eyes, and _see_ his own resolve starting to dissolve in the shiny brass because _for the love of God what kinds of the_ **_things_ ** _are Fiddleford up to anyways—_

A tapping at the window next to his bed shattered his focus on the staring contest with the doorknob, and he jumped nearly a foot off his mattress, unsteadily landing on his feet and pivoting towards the blinds.

The tapping striked again, slightly louder the second time, and he focused his eyes through the broken blinds, trying to make out the identity of the shadow outside his window, his pulse pounding against his jugular because he had read musty poems about haunted musings tapping at one’s chamber door, and as much as he disliked poetry, a bust of Pallas was already generating to his left in his mind’s eye and _Jesus it’s 2 a.m._ and _Jesus someone’s at my window at 2 a.m._ and he thought briefly of burglary before throwing out the notion, assuming a burglar would not tap at a window before any planned illicit activities, nor would he find much to steal from the roach-infested dorms of two broke Backupsmore students, and in his head he could still hear on loop: _tis the wind and nothing more._

Gathering all the gumption in hits being, he approached his bed once more, leaning a knee against the mattress and throwing back the blinds to come face to face with his wide-eyed visitor,shaking in the autumn chill and looking much less ominous than a raven

“Carlos?”

As Ford unlatched the window and opened it, Carlos stayed on the trimming of the building outside the window, eyeing the floor as though he considered jumping from this height, but still remaining stooped by the windowsill.

Ford stared dumbly at the young man, foolishly awaiting an explanation that wouldn’t come because _Of course there’s a man outside my window in the middle of the night, because it’s not like I have a right to know why these things are happening_ and because _sure, Carlos, don’t explain yourself, I just wanted a perfectly normal night but who needs that, right?_

Carlos stayed still, doe-eyed in the light streaming from the window like headlights, as he rubbed his shoulder, seeming as much at a loss for words as Ford was before Ford broke the silence.

“Carlos? What are you doing at my window?”

As though being snapped out of a dream-like haze, Carlos shook his head, losing his balance for a second but righting himself before Ford could reach out. With a deep breath, he spoke, his words fogging in the nighttime breeze.

“Where’s Ford?”

“Um… I’m —”

“Not you, Other Ford, the _other_ Ford. _Fiddle_ ford. I — he’s supposed to be here right now.”

“Carlos, what are you _doing_ here in the—”

“What time is it?”

“What — it’s _fuck-all_ in the morning, and you knock on my window to find out what _time_ it is? Why are you here, Carlos?”

Carlos shook his head, looked at the ground three stories below in contemplation once more, and then quickly pulled the head of a wristwatch with ripped leather straps, out of his pocket.

As Carlos looked deeply at the watch, Ford stared dumbly through the open window at him, attempting fruitlessly to make sense of his visitor, before glancing quickly at the four fingered hand clutching the watch. Carlos looked up at him again, and Ford wretched his eyes back to the puzzling conversation at hand.

“It’s 2 a.m.,” said Carlos, while Ford crossed his arms. “Where’s Fiddleford? He was supposed to be here.”

“The hospital. Something came up with his nanna, I guess.”

Carlos’s eyes widened even more, as though that were possible, and his demeanor changed. He stopped shaking, and suddenly everything about him was soft and sad and silent. He stared again at the watch, lips tightened into a strict line.

Ford took Carlos's moment of thought to glance again at the four-fingered hand, his eyebrows furrowed. It’s a strange thing, Ford decided, to come across the opposite of one’s problem, and the more he stared, the harder it was to look at.

It was not a defect from birth, for sure. The index finger was stubbed off before the middle knuckle, with clean white gashes striping the dark skin. It was cut, but not cleanly, and though the skin had healed over the curve of the bone, it was recent enough for the puckering at the tip to still show strongly, and briefly Ford thought of being 13 and sitting in his room in Jersey with a pair of dull old garden shears from the pawn shop below, scraping the blade along his pinky finger until it was raw, tightening the grip enough to break skin but never more, and he started to feel sick, because it’s not like Carlos had been born a freak, but he had normality trimmed away, and he truly couldn’t decide which was probably worse—

“You know… I would have guessed that you of all people would know better than to stare,” Carlos said, and Frod ripped his eyes away to meet his tired expression, glancing away sheepishly.

“Sorry, it’s just…” His words trailed off, finding himself in the awkwardness he must have forced countless people into with confrontational glares during interactions over his own fingers. “...How—”

“Mechanic accident. Some heavy equipment fell, crushed right through the bone.” He looked back towards the floor with a contemplation Ford liked less and less with every passing moment, but this time the expression was brief and Carlos turned towards Ford with a small smile.

“So, you got full mobility on all twelve?” Carlos asked.

“Hmm?”

“Of your fingers? You have full mobility?”

“Oh. Um, yeah.”

“That's pretty sweet. Really rare. Gotta be cool to have that dexterity. Twelve working fingers.”

Ford shrugged. “Well, there’s such thing as too much of a good thing.”

An impenetrable silence filled the room and Ford cleared his throat.

“It’s no big deal.” He glanced back up to Carlos, meeting his eyes and echoing the false comforts they were undoubtedly both familiar with. “They’re just fingers, right?”

“Yeah.... Just fingers.” They share another look, like they’re resisting the urge to either giggle at or mourn the circumstances of finding someone who _gets_ it, before Ford clears his throat once again.

“So what possessed you to break into my dorm at this hour, Carlos?”

The moment is shattered and the smiles wipes itself off Carlos’ lips and he looks away in silence once more.

“Look, Carlos, as long as you’re not here to glue buttplugs to my mirror, or paint a ballsack on my wall, for, y’know, animal rights or something, I really have no problem with you. But I would love to know why you’re knocking on my window when any normal person would be asleep.”

“You’re not asleep.”

“Well, I’ve got 6 fingers. Normal’s not really what I do best.”

Silence on both ends. A deep breath. Thickness in the air.

“I’ve kinda been living here for 5 days.”

Ford heard him wrong. Obviously. Naturally.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Ford’s been — I mean, _McGucket’_ s been sneaking me in here every night at 2 a.m.”

That's a lot of words to mishear from three feet away, but Ford still shook his head. He heard him wrong. Indubitably. Undoubtedly.

“I’m sorry, _what_?”

“You weren’t supposed to know.  It was only supposed to be for a day or two. I’m not even coming to spend the night right now — I just need to grab my stuff and—”

“What stuff?! What—you’ve seriously been living here? How? Where?!

“The closet.”

Ford looks at the _door of mysteries_ , exasperation building in the pit of his stomach, and shouts, “Mechanical parts my ass!”

“Sorry, what?”

“Nothing. It’s just—ugh—why were you even here?”

Again, silence settled into the cracks and Carlos stored to fidget with the peeling paint of the windowsill. “Well?” Ford pressed.

“I just needed a place to stay.” His face was twisted adamantly and his tone suggested finality on the subject.

With a  sigh and a mental curse of _fuckingFiddlefordfuckingMcGucket_ , Ford stepped aside. “... Just grab your stuff. It's late. I have studying to do.”

Carlos climbed in, stepping the blanket as Ford loudly protested about the dirt being tracked on the bedding, and marched to the closet like he had done it dozens of times before. The door was swung open to reveal a blanket littered with a wallet, lamp, a few books, a bible, a bag of laundry, empty water bottles, and several Ford’s own glass plates, given to him and lovingly packed by his mom, dirty with the last week of meals.

Carlos made quick work of it, pushing the plates, none too gently, to the side, and gathering his belongings in the middle of the blanket, lifting the corners to tie into a bundle. He turned, once finished, to meet Ford standing in shock, his mouth gaped open with a look of disbelief.

“You, um, you okay there, Other Ford?”

Ford closed his mouth as nodded numbly. “I just can’t believe Fidds did this.  And I had no idea. We had someone living in our dorm and I didn't even — he never even — Why didn't he just ask?”

Carlos stopped with his knee on the mattress and gave Ford a strange look. “If he had asked if I could stay here, would you have said yes?”

And immediately he thought of Stanley, and pushed the thought out of his betraying mind because _That's not the same thing_ and _He doesn't need help_ and _He Probably doesn't need help_ and _He's probably fine_ and _No, he's fine_ and _He's got personality and_ _He's fine_ and _He's fine_ and _He's fine_ and — _Stop_.

He was about to answer but Carlos had already turned away.

“Besides,” Carlos said, one foot on the windowsill and the other pushing dirt further into Ford's comforter. “It's not like it matters. When Ford — _Fiddle_ ford has his mind set on something, he's not gonna back down just because someone says no.”

Ford crosses his arms. “Yeah, he's, um, he's—” ( _Stubborn? Easily excited?  Irritating? Gay? Homosexual? Queer as a 7-proton carbon atom? The strangest and most brilliant man I've ever met?_ ) “— He’s really something isn’t he?”

Carlos looks back, lifting the sack of belongings over his shoulder, with something a lot like admiration and another emotion Ford can't quite place in his expression.

“Yes. He’s definitely _something_.”

And with that, he crawls back out the window, disappearing into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, guys. Life is cray-cray. 
> 
> Also, please let me know what you think! The plot is going to start thickening and fleshing out more in the next chapter, and I'd love to hear what you guys like/dislike about it so far. Comments are welcome!


	5. Snakes and Rats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been forever. I'm sorry. At any rate, I hope you all enjoy!
> 
> EDIT: I've been struggling financially lately with some medical costs. Here's a GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/hanas-dentalmedical-expenses

“Have you ever—”

Ford stops himself mid-syllable, wondering why he had bothered impacting the comfortable silence in the room, and instead rolling off his back, turning to check that his roommate was still distracted by the machinery he’d been distracted with all day.

McGucket sat on his bed, cross legged, a green circuit board and a bundle of multicolored wires in his lap, as he had for the last three hours of the morning, making no noise but the occasional under-breath false-swear (usually “horse-spittle” or “fudge-pie”) and the tinkering of a screwdriver scraped against metal.

Neither of the boys had spoken about their nightly intruder and clandestine roommate. Mcgucket had rushed through the door at the strike of four the previous night, out of breath and frantic, before taking a long look at the breeze sifting the curtains through the open window, the closet cleared of all of Carlos’s belongings (give or take a few crumbs he’d have to sweep in the morning) and a long, unimpressed scowl on the part of Ford, which read simply: _ I know what you did, I’m not happy, but I’m too damn tired to talk about the fact that you were stowing a practical stranger in my home for five days. _

And indeed, Ford  _ had _ been too tired to address it — his brain had been buzzing with the indications of the glance that had been thrown over Carlos’s shoulder as he left.

It was a strange look on the boy’s face, but not an unfamiliar one. 

It was the same twinkle in Carla McCorkle’s eye after seeing Grandpa the Kid in theaters with Stan, and the same twinkle in Stan’s eye after he came home smelling like that foul-mouthed boy from the pier, the Mona-Lisa-likened haze of attraction that Ford supposed he recognized, but hadn’t experienced. 

(though, of course, he had, but not in the same way — for Ford it was the spray of the ocean, or the smell of wood stain on a crummy old sailboat, or sand without glass shards, or the feel of newly bought books, or writing an essay with a new pen and the words flowing freely, or reading about constellations for three hours before staying up and finding your first one outside your bedroom window, and knowing that you’d learned something NEW, and the rush of that giving you goosebumps, and Fiddleford — Stop.)

And the fact that Carlos had harbored it for Fiddleford confused Ford, yes, but not as much as he supposed he should have been.

I mean, it was obvious at this point that Fiddleford was, indeed, queer. 

_ He’s definitely something. _

Confronting the idea was less an expedition into unexplored terrain and more a self-administered slap to the face at this point, like dunking himself into ice water to wake up after a long night of studying, and after finding himself accidentally-not-accidentally finding himself rifling through the skin magazines that found themselves cycling beneath Fiddleford’s bed every month 

(to look at the photography, no other reason, and to marvel at the typos in the captions and chastise the editors, though he supposed it must be hard to pay attention to editing when you had to glance up and find yourself faced with a nearly naked — Stop)

Ford had to acknowledge that something was a little queer about himself, as well. 

(not that it was something to be proud of, he assured himself with a duty and distance he reserved for boring class assignments or chores or Stan—Stop)

And like all great mysteries, a hypothesis had to be cultivated, and then revised and experimented on, but first he needed  _ data _ , to base his hypothesis on to start with.

But other than the way the satin draped across the lap of the chiseled man on page 45 of the November issue he had inconspicuously “borrowed” from under Fiddleford’s bed (for science, of course) and the way the tan foundation powder felt on his nose after being applied by Fiddleford to lighten the bruises—

(and the way he had caught himself with that same  _ look _ on his own face from time to time after long debates with his roommate on the theory of relativity and the role of computers in a consumer environment and on the frivolity of protests)

— Ford had nothing to go on.

“What was that?”

Ford looked up to see that Fiddleford was no longer tinkering away, and was instead staring straight at him with an air of defensiveness. Ford sat up, feet tapping on the hardwood, trying to formulate the words.

“Well, Ford? You got something to say?

Fiddleford’s aggression didn’t come as a surprise — he was probably still on edge from the night before; the tension of their stowaway situation hadn’t yet dispersed, and the crumbs left by Carlos were an elephant in the room.

But, addressing one elephant over another, Ford started to speak

“Have you ever... gayed?”

Fiddleford’s tinkering stopped, and Ford’s eyes didn’t lift from the floorboards, but he could hear the creaking of the bed as Fiddleford adjusted, sitting up and staring at the ceiling for a moment to ponder. 

“Gayed, Ford?”

“Well… yes.”

“As in the past-tense form of ‘gaying?’ Is that really the sentence structure you’re going with?”

Ford swallowed and looked up to meet a piercing gaze from Fiddleford across the room. The expression was indecipherable, a mix of bemusement and frustration and something like fear. Ford wondered how his own face looked at the moment.

“How would you word it, then?”

Fiddleford leaned back against the wall, brushing the machinery to the side. “I wouldn’t word it at all, to be honest. It’s not the type of thing I’d ask someone.”

“Well, why not?” It was Ford’s turn to be indignant, and he crossed his arms, doubling down on meeting Fiddleford’s eyes. “I’m curious, so I’m asking. Isn’t that the right thing to do when you’re not sure about something? Ask questions? Isn’t that the scientific method?”

“People ain’t experiments, Ford.”

“I’d say! Experiments actually make sense.”

“Well, what exactly are ya tryna  find out?”

“Well, if you’ve ever—”

“What?  _ Gayed _ ? What does that even  _ mean _ ?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It means —” Ford’s breath is caught before the sentence leaves his lips, and he realized with a start that he didn’t know what he meant. Did he want to know if Fiddleford ever harbored affection for another man? Kissed another man? Had that  _ look  _ that Carlos had for another man? Snuck looks at nude photos of male models beneath his roommate’s bed? 

“If you ever exhibited behavior that was… gay.”

“Specific,” Fiddleford muttered dryly, rolling his eyes. “I still don’ see how you think that’s your business.”

“Ha! If you had nothing to hide, why not just say no?!”

“I dunno, if I asked you if you ever  _ straighted _ , would ya break out a list of late-night rendezvous?”

“I wouldn’t have a _ list _ ! I’m not a- a  _ ruffian _ !”

“A ruffian, Ford? Again, that’s the phrasing you’re really going with?”

“You’re dodging the question!”

“You shouldn’t be askin’ it!”

They both realized, with a start, that they were shouting, and take a moment to collectively breathe and break the gaze. Finally, Ford leaned forward.

“Look, Fiddleford. You can tell me. I mean, don’t I have a right to know?”

“A  _ right _ ?”

Ford winced at the exasperation. “Well, yes. I like to think that we’re friends, or, well, something. Shouldn’t I know? I mean, everyone else seems to know already! Erickson’s already etched it into you like initials on a tree! Why not me? Why can’t I know?”

_ (why can’t you just tell me? Stan had no problem telling me and —  _ He’s fine _ —it didn’t hurt him —  _ I think  _ — I didn’t hurt him — _ I think _ — he could trust me —  _ I think  _ — I understood and I didn’t want to understand I tried so hard to make him think I didn’t understand and maybe I was never as good a liar as he was and he knew—)  _

Fiddleford exhaled and stared at the floor, watching Newton scurry across. “They don’t have a right to know either,” he said quietly. “And neither do you.”

They sat in silence for a moment, before Fiddleford climbed to his feet. Ford didn’t look up from the floor, but felt the weight on his bed, and the warmth of his friend next to him. 

“Look, Ford.” Fiddleford placed a hand on Ford’s shoulder, and to meet his gaze once more. “Maybe don’t ask… an’ just wait for me to tell. Is that fair?”

Ford hesitated for a moment, but then nodded, and they sat on the bed, facing each other. It was a strange phenomenon, and he was suddenly aware of everything from the number of times he was blinking to the ragged breaths he was forcing himself to remember to take and he had to force a shudder out of himself ( _ because he wasn’t Stan and Fiddleford wasn’t the boy by the pier and he wasn’t going to do this even if he _ did  _ understand and _ —  _ Stop _ )

The electronic mess on Fiddleford’s bed let out a series of screeching beeps  and both boys jumped in opposite directions, with the back of Ford’s head colliding with the windowsill and Fiddleford diving to the floor. Neither of them breathed and the door was knocked again as the beeping echoed in the background.

Clearing his throat, Fiddleford rose to his feet and approached the bed, slamming his hand on a red button hanging from a loose wire. The beeping stopped and he collapsed on the mattress. 

“What even is that?” Ford asked, brushing the hair from his forehead absently.

“It’s going to be a security system when it’s done, but the trigger’s going haywire.”

“Security? For what?”

“Well it’s jus’ for —”

Ford rolled his eyes. “Let me guess —”

“ _ Things _ ,” they said  in unison.

Silence began to settle between them once more, until finally, Fiddleford spryly jumped to his feet and grabbed his jacket from the kitchen counter. 

He sighed and turned to Ford. “Look, I’d love to pick up this conversation where we left off, kinda, not really, but I’ve gotta head out.”

“You have work today?”

“No actually, I’m gon’ stop by the hospital.”

“Your nana —Oh! Is she doing okay or—”

“She’s fine fer now. Just had a scary night, so I’mma go in, check with the doctors an’ leave. Won’t be too long.”

As Fiddleford approached the door, Ford found himself jumping to his feet as well.

“Wait!”

He hadn’t meant to shout, but out it came, and the apartment was quiet once more. Fiddleford turned with a raised eyebrow, looking just as confused as Ford felt.

“Yes, Ford?”

Ford cleared his throat and held his hands behind his back, wondering what he was going to say even as he said it. “Well… um…. I was wondering if... I could... join you?”

“Join me to visit my sick grandmother?” Fiddleford deadpanned.

“Well, maybe not… quite that. I dunno. Maybe just to get out of the dorm. Off campus.”

“You never leave campus.”

Ford paled but cleared his throat again. It was true. Nearly two months had passed, but he still had never set a foot off campus. Because, well, he never  _ wanted  _  to leave campus.

(It was a strange phenomenon, being in a place where Stan had never been and probably never would be, a place his own, and even if it was sad and cracked and dingy and infested with roaches and fleas and Erickson, it was his  _ own _ , and —)

“Well, I’ve wanted to. For, um, for a while now. I just don’t know the area. Maybe… um… maybe you could help me out with that?”

“Well, Ford, to be honest, I doubt there’s anything around here that’d tickle your fancy too much. I mean, there’s a library, but it’s got nothing but children’s books hand-me downs, and there’s the old boxing gym, but you hardly seem the athletic type,an’—”

“A boxing gym?”

“Yeah?”

“That… uh… that actually sounds pretty nice.”

Fiddleford raised an eyebrow incredulously. “Really?”

“Um, yeah, um, I box.”

Fiddleford stared him down, waiting for the punchline, but after musing over the thought for a moment and a half Fiddleford looked away, nodding. “Yeah, I suppose I’ve seen you hold your own in a scrap. Jus’ never seen you as the scrapping type is all. But sure, why not? Ford, the athlete. Ha! It’s a concept all it’s own.”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised, Fiddleford.”

“Oh yes, I do, I’ve met you. But hey, it’s small potatoes. Just be sure to shower afterwards.”

“You don’t have to tell me to shower Fidds!”

“Don’t I? Carlos was hiding in the bathtub for two days straight last week, and let me tell you, there’s a reason I never thought you’d be the one to stumble on him in there.”

Fiddleford held the door to the hall open, expectantly, smirking, and with a sigh and a grumble of “the concept of daily showers are a conspiracy from Big Soap,” Ford followed.

________________________________________________________________________

The bus was a new experience for Ford, as they’ve been absent from the thin, run-down streets of Glass Shard Beach

(admittedly a lot of things were absent from Glass Shard Beach like a spotlight for one and crooked teeth and beautiful stormy eyes and room for all the questions Ford had brimming below the surface but similarities still lied in the roaches and a space that never felt quite large enough to grow)

But the experience was lovely, for the most part, given the odor rising from the sticky floor and the ramblings of the sleeping man from the seats across from them.

Ford and Fiddleford sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a damp seat, each holding on to the vertical metal bars at their sides for dear life, as the bus creaked and bumped through a trail of pot-holes. 

It was nice, Ford had decided, even as his shoe stuck to the floor every time he tapped his foot, waiting for the coming stop. He struggled to get comfortable, wedged between the tense shoulder of Fiddleford and his own thick duffle bag, filled to capacity with pads, gloves, hand tape, bandaids, and anything he could think of to prepare for anything he could think of. The lumpy weight of the bag dug into one arm as the unmoving warmth of fiddleford dug into the other, and he only remembered to breathe with every bump of a pothole as he was tossed this way and that. 

He didn’t know why he had agreed to this venture from the dorm, or from the campus, or from anything farther than Pablo’s Ice Cream Parlor, for that matter. Maybe the fumes of the pesticide their dorm-neighbor’s had fruitlessly laid down were getting to him, or the cabin fever of a room he’d unwittingly shared with a practical stranger the week before, (or stormy blue eyes and a missing tooth and the closest thing he’d felt to being a part of a pair since Stan left, about to leave out the door— Stop)

“Stop #457, McDowell and Broadway!” The driver loudly bellowed from her seat to the near-empty bus cabin behind her, announcing at top volume to occupants all close enough to hear if she had muttered. 

Ford was still for a moment, musing over the layout of the city, and the skyline out the window slowing to a skidding, rugged stop. It wasn’t until he felt the weight of Fiddleford shift and rise like hot air next to him that he realized it was his stop as well, and following Fiddleford’s lead, he quickly thanked the driver and stumbled out the back exit. 

After an hour or so in silence on the bus, he felt his bones breathing and creaking out of their cramped position, and he stood for a moment, taking in the empty, grey stone city around him. 

It was no boardwalk —

(with no hustle or bustle or conmen or liars or short skirts or short shorts or short Jersey fisherman yelling about shipments in the harbor or sand with glass razors for grains that sparkled like diamonds or overpriced pawn antiquities or creaky boats or rotting wood fresh from the saltwater or taffy or Stan — He’s fine —Stop)

—but it was certainly something.

“Well,” Fiddleford started, spinning on his heals towards a stone monolith of a hospital a block away and pointing, “that there’s my stop. I’m prob’ly only goin’ ta be an hour or so; I jus’ need ta check on her, and speak with her doctors and then I’ll be back in a jiffy. That —” he pointed to the building directly to their right, a red brick rectangle with a fading sign depicting a pair of boxing gloves, overlapped with yellow graffiti that looked less than a month old. “—Is where you’ll be, I assume. So… um, well, ‘ave fun.” 

Without more than a smile and a speedy nod, he turned and strutted away, keeping his eyes forward.

Ford found himself surveying the wall he faced, a windowless canvas littered with splotches and splatters of spray paint, as he wondered where the entrance could be. He started circling the building to the left, into an alleyway littered with glass—

(but just dull brown shattered beer cans and jars from the trash, not the beach’s fine-ground glass strewn like crystals through the sand)

—until he found a barred steel door buried in rust and chalky handprints, that looked like it should be locked by all means, but by some miracle wasn’t. 

All boxing gyms, he realized as he stepped into the interior barely a degree warmer than the autumn wind whistling outside, are alike, as though they were all the same singularity in the multiverse with a million million entrances. 

The same smells, the same look, the same swinging, buzzing lights and the same cold floor with thin beaten mats — though it’d take more than a sample size of two to be sure, Ford mind was already whirring through a theoretical fixed point, a liminal space in space-time, as he set his bag down, shed his jacket, embraced the brisk metallic chill of the air and dug for his boxing tape. 

The wrist was first, and he stretched the length around and around and around and let himself get lost in the familiarity of it all, in the still air and the echo of his steps as he approached the twisting sandbag. 

It was a lot, almost too much, he had to admit, to be in a boxing gym. I mean, true, he boxed, but it had been years since he’d been anywhere near a place like this, and the — _ wrap the palm one two three  _ — feel of it all was overwhelming. After all, he’d never been in a gym without Stan, not ever, and it —  _ wrap the knuckles one two twist around the thumb _ — was almost as like he was reclaiming the experience for his own. He never was  _ the _ boxer, but now maybe he could be, he —  _ five more fingers, wrap wrap wrap  _ — could be whatever he wanted to here and —  _ anchor the thumb, one two wrap  _ — maybe he didn’t need to be scared of doing it alone.

He kept the gloves in his bag for now, as he circled the sandbag, getting into the rhythm of the foot work and raising his fists. What was the old trick? Imagine the face of someone you loathed? It never really did the trick for him, but there’s some truth to cliches, and as soon as he visualized the fat ugly piggy face of Erickson, the jab swung forward on its own accord. But it was weak.

He bounced back and forth from a brown leather patch sewn on the bag, as it languidly swung to and fro. He was suddenly hyper-aware of the positioning of his fist, and even as he assured himself it was right — ( _ thumb on the outside, tight but not too tight, don’t let it curve down _ ) — he could hear a rugged voice — ( _ don’t overthink it fighting isn’t something you overthink Sixer it’s just a frame of mind there’s nothing there to think about just punching and moving and going and going and going _ ) — and feel his fingernails against the tape, scraping slightly with every bounce, and he could see — (the flashing buzzing lights and his dad with something barely registering as a smile on his face and  **_Stan_ ** )

The left hook propelled itself forward on it’s own accord and from there the haymakers and jabs went flying, one after another, to the beat of his own awkward bouncing feet and the sprinkling of sand through the bag’s stitches, again and again and again and 

(because it always was  **Stan** , wasn’t it, he always was good at going and going and going and)

— again and —

( _ You’ll get it Sixer I swear you just need to stop thinking so hard and you’ll get it and _ )

— again and —

( _ it’s not a matter of how you punch or where your fingers go or anything it’s just… a punch just a punch Sixer just think about something you hate and let the punches fly and _ )

— again and —

( _ me I think of pops I swear nothing wins me a match more than thinking of pops and _ )

— again and —

( _ I know you don’t feel the same I mean for Christ’s sake he’s our father and I know something must be wrong with me but you know we never saw eye to eye Sixer and _ )

— again and —

( _ maybe you’ll find who gives you the right punch one day and _ )

(Stop.)

“Footwork lookin’ a bit sloppy there, Pines!”

Ford fell backward on the bounce back, tumbling to his ass and looking around for the source of the voice in the echoing gym. From the floor, he must have looked manic, twisting around the empty mat, until eventually, he saw him: A tall man with blond hair and a mustache that curled and fell beneath his chin. 

He wore a heavy, patchy leather jacket over a thin tank top and carried himself across the gym towards Ford with a confidence in his strut the likes of which are rarely seen. It was like he danced a waltz in every stride, with wide sweeping steps and emphasis on every heel. The stranger smirked and leaned against the ring, while Ford climbed to his feet and tried to continue the bounces from where he left off.

“Do I know you?” Ford asked, still awkwardly bouncing around the bag even after a weak jab on empty fumes barely registered.

“Oof. That’s cold, Pines.” The man whipped blonde locks behind him and tightened a red bandana as he approached with a half-pained smile. “Come on, man.”

Ford tried to block him out, with pendulum steps from the left and right, bouncing around the mat.

“Seriously, though. Your form’s way off.”

“My footwork’s fine!” Ford snapped, turning towards the stranger and catching his breath. “It’s just been a while. And how do you know me, anyway?”

The man’s smile fleeted for a moment before coming back with vigor. “I saw your fight last week? You okay, Pines? Geez, how hard did Montez hit you? Look, that doesn’t even matter. What are you still doing in town?”

“What are you talking about?” Ford took a step back, stopping only when he felt the grainy leather of the sandbag behind him. 

“Montez? Juan Montez? Buzz cut, face tatt? Said he’d slit your throat if he ever saw you again? Pleasant guy aside from the imminent death threats. Makes great lemon bars.”

Ford stared blankly, shaking his head, pushing back against the sandbag. “What are you talking about?” 

“He’s the one who broke your nose a few weeks back, remember? And from the eye an’ ear of it, it’s not doing too good. You sound awful, Pines.”

“I don’t know who you are!” Ford shouts desperately, raising his fists in front of him and half-hiding.

The stranger leans back and forth on his heels, hands in his pocket, with his smirk reduced to a pained grin once more. But there was more to his eyes than just curiosity or pain, it was that  _ look  _  the look that Carlos that Fiddleford that Stan that Ford had —  _ Stop _ .

“Come on. It’s me. It’s Jimmy. You okay, Stan?”

(Stan.  **_Stan_ ** . Because of course it was Stan, it was always Stan, and he always had to come in to everything that was Ford’s and make it  _ theirs _ . And yeah, Ford was still bitter, who wouldn’t be, his brother couldn’t just  _ infest _ everything that belonged to him and only him with his sticky toffee hands for the rest of their natural fucking lives —  _ Stop _ )

Again, the jab flew forward on it’s own accord, seamlessly and swiftly, towards Jimmy’s jaw, and Ford felt a flurry of  _ oh my God I’m punching him  _ and _ oh my God I hope I don’t punch him  _ and _ oh my God I hope I punch his fucking lights out  _ and —

Jimmy caught the punch and dropped it onto his palm before his eyes widened. 

“You wrapped this wrong, not at all like I showed you and —”

Ford stared at Jimmy, before realizing what it was he was saying under his breath

“One, two, three, four, five…  _ six _ ?”

He pulled his hand back from Jimmy’s grasp, but not before Jimmy grabbed at his wrist.

“So, you’re Ford huh?”

Jimmy’s voice was no longer musing or soft, but it was laced with bitterness. Ford tried to pull his hand back, but it was caught in an iron grip and he was tugged forward toward Jimmy’s irish-coffee-breath.

“You’re the prodigal fucking son that left Stan out to dry, eh?”

Ford stammered to a loss, fragments of “please” and “I don’t know” and “Is he okay” and “Stop” and “Stop” and “ _ Stop _ ” and

“Oh, he told me all about you. He’s probably half-way to Canada now with a broken nose and a shattered rib, with Montez after him with a crowbar, and here you are, just sitting in the pieces he left behind.”

_ Stop _

“What’s goin’ on here?”

Everything seemed to freeze in time as both men turned to see McGucket at the gym entrance, still wrapped in his patched heavy jacket, looking at the scene playing in front of him.

“Well, hey there, Guck! You came just in time!” Jimmy said, squeezing Ford’s wrist even tighter as he turned with grandeur. “Look at what I managed to reel in! An arrogant little shit who can’t even throw a punch.”

Fiddleford slowly approached the scene. “Ford? How do you know Snakes?”

Before Ford could answer, Jimmy let out a cold, hearty laugh. “Ha! He doesn’t know me, but I know him. The real question is, how do  _ you _ know him, McGucket.”

“He’s uh…” McGucket’s cheeks reddened and he stood still. “He’s the roommate. The one I told you about.”

Jimmy’s eyes bulged open in surprise and he dropped Ford to the floor in a heap like a wet sweatshirt. “He’s the… and you…”

McGucket nodded and Jimmy took his steps back towards the ring, leaning against the ropes and shaking his head. “What a web we’ve slithered ourselves into.” He said with a chuckle.

As Ford massaged his bruised wrist and kep his eyes downward, he could hear the other two muttering. 

“Remember the boxer, the one I told you about? Fire in his eye but no where to stay?”

“The one that didn’t take the fall for Montez?”

“Yeah. That’s his brother.”

“The one you were… oh I’m so sorry, Snakes.”

“Yeah, he said he was home free to Canada. To be honest, I thought this fucker was him.”

“So they’re—”

“Twins, or at least crazy similar.”

“Small , small world, huh?

“You said it, Guck.”

Grabbing his duffle bag and jacket, Ford didn’t stick around to listen to anything else. He pivoted on his heels, and with a glance to an apologetic stare from McGucket and a bitter glare from Jimmy, he sauntered from the room into the cold wind.

________________________________________________________________________

The bus ride home was quieter, if possible, than the silent first trip downtown. Neither Ford nor Fiddleford said anything, both crossing their arms, elbows digging into the other’s sides. If anyone were on the empty bus, they would have found a look of mulling confusion on Fiddleford’s face, and stewing anger on Ford’s.  

Because of course he was angry. Stan had gone gallivanting around downtown, showing his face to everyone in  _ Ford’s _ city and  _ Ford’s  _ world, getting in trouble with the  _ goddamn mob?  _

When the bus stopped outside backupsmore, Ford did no waiting around, hopping to his feet with a tight grip on his duffle bag, with a brisk walk to the dorm, with Fiddleford not far behind. It wasn’t until the lobby, after a quarter-mile of speed walking, that Fiddleford finally caught up to hm, placing a hand on his shoulder before he could start the trek up the stairs. 

“Ford, wait.”

“Wait for what? What! There, I have a brother. You know. And you know he’s running about, making all this trouble, and he’s —”

“Ford, you could have told me.”

“Why?! Why did I need to tell you? ”

Fiddleford tightened his grip on the shoulder as Ford tried to rush up the stairs, this time with a steely resolve. “You can’t go around this morning talkin’ ‘bout ‘ _ I have a right to know yer bus’ness _ ’ when you ain’t ready to share yours, Ford.”

Ford deflated as the grip softened before shaking the shoulder away and starting his trek upstairs, slowly and evenly, stomping with every breath. Fiddleford followed behind. “So, this brother of yours… his name is…”

“Stanley. Well, Stan.”

Fiddleford’s eyebrows raised with understanding. “I see. Stanley and Stanford. Two Stans.”

“No. One Stan, and one Ford. Two people.  _ Two different people _ . Two people with different goals, and ideas and aspirations, in that I had some, and he had  _ none. _ And only one of us is a goddamn pain in the ass.”

“I suspect you mean that description for him, then? Because I can’t really tell.” Ford stopped and spun on his heals and met Fiddleford’s smirk head on as they approached the hallway of their dorm. 

“Yes, I meant it for him. And you wanna know  _ why,  _ Fiddleford?  _ Why _ I don’t wanna mention my brother, or have anything to do with him since entering this cesspit of a school?”

“I reckon you’ll tell me anyways, so sure. Why?”

“Because I’m not supposed to be  _ here. _ I’m supposed to be in California, with a full scholarship to the school of my dreams, far away from Erickson, or Crampelter, or my family, or my good-for-nothing-brother, or underground boxing matches, or —”

“Or me?” 

Fiddleford’s cool voice froze Ford’s anger in his throat, and he didn’t bother responding, just turned again and started stomping down the halls as the tears prickled at his eyes. “No. Not you. Just… Ugh, just drop it, okay?”

Fiddleford shrugged and followed, hands in pockets as Ford fumbled with the dorm keys in his pockets with shaking hands, finally opening the door and swinging it forward —

The door stopped, stuck on a cardboard package that had been thrown in, and Ford took a step in, peering around the door to the floor with a cautiousness reserved only for his paranoid eye. 

The package was small and unassuming, and stamped on the front was Fiddleford’s name, typed scrawled in uneven writing.

Ford kicked it aside on his way in and pointed it at haphazardly as he walked towards his bed, laying down as though he’d been gone for days, when it was only a few hours. 

“Package for you,” he muttered as he pointed, even as Fiddleford was already tearing into it.

“Finally! Finally, it’s here!” Fiddleford shouted, dropping scraps of brown package paper to the floor to lift a bag containing roughly a gallon of blackened red liquid, with a joy in his eyes reserved for kids at Christmas. “Well I’ll be a pig in a  mudslide, would you look at this!”

It was thick and dark, not like paint but more like… like —

“Is that  _ blood _ ?”

Ford jumped to his feet, raising a shaking hand.

Fiddleford glanced up. “Yeah.. why you asking?”

“Why?  _ Why _ ?! You order a package of blood, and you want me to know why I’m wondering about it?”

“I mean, again, not yer business, Ford.”

“Not my  _ business _ ? You’re bringing a gallon of,” he drops his voice into a hushed, screeching whisper, “ _ Blood _ — into our dorm and you think it’s not my business?”

“I jus’ need it for —

“Things?  _ Things?!  _ What kind of  _ things  _ could you possibly need  _ blood _ for? 

“You’d know those things if you just joined the crew!”

“I’m not going to join your stupid crew! I’m not spreading  _ real blood  _ on the side of a statue or something because  _ you  _ have issues with authority! Is it — Oh my god, is it  _ human! _ ?”

Fiddleford rises to his feet “It’s jus’ cow’s blood. Chillax, man.” He made it to the fridge in two strides and places the blood on the back drawer. 

“Oh my God.  _ Oh my GOD _ . You are telling me to ‘c _ hillax _ ’ and you’re putting blood in —  _ Oh my God. _ ”

“You told us we had ta get serious if we wanted to make a serious message.”

“I did  _ not  _ mean this!”

“Don’ say things you don’t mean, then.”

“What are you planning? I’m not getting expelled for your — your eccentricities!”

“Eccentricities? When have you ever had a problem with eccentric, Ford. You worship a man who was in love with a pigeon.”

“I’ll have you know, Tesla had a  _ lovely bond _ —”

A knock at the door stilled the atmosphere in the room and both Ford and Fiddleford froze in their place. The world was still for a moment, with the fury residing in the cracks in the floorboards, before Ford approached the door and cracked it open.

“Hello — … Oh. It’s you,” the words came out aggrieved, and he swung the door open to reveal Vanessa, nose rings and all. 

“McGucket, it’s for you. One of your vandals is here,” Ford said, turning towards his bed and walking away. 

McGucket rolled his eyes and started his approach when he was interrupted by Vanessa clearing her throat. 

“Actually, I’m here for you, Other Ford.”

Ford turned back towards her with crossed arms and a raised eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Not here on crew business, I’m here on Dean business, and Dean Marson wants to see you in his office.”

“Why?” McGucket asked, with a warbled voice.

“Well, I can’t be too sure,” Vanessa said. “But if I didn’t know any better, I’d say the Dean wants your little friend here to rat on you for our last demonstration.”

McGucket snorted. “Yeah, well that’s not gonna happen. Ford here’s not a snitch. Right Ford?”

He looked up at Ford’s eyes and the grin was instantly dropped. Ford said nothing and looked to the floor. 

“Right, Ford?” McGucket pressed, arms tightly crossed.

Ford looked up between the two of them and leaned back into the closet door. “It’s not like I know much to tell, McGucket.”

“Yeah, I know that. But you’re not going to tell him what you  _ do  _ know, right?”

The silence was palpable before Ford let out a sigh. “McGucket, I’m not getting expelled for you.”

“I’m  _ not  _ gonna get you expelled, Ford.”

“I have a bag of cow’s blood in my drawer that says otherwise, Fiddleford.”

“Which you  _ don’t know  _ about, understand?”

Vanessa perked up. “Wait, it’s here?”

“Yeah,” Ford said, dripping with false enthusiasm, “Right there, in my dorm, waiting to get caught there so I could get kicked out of the worst university this side of the Mississippi.”

“Ford,” McGucket started, “You’re not gonna get expelled —”

“No, McGucket,  _ you’re  _ not getting expelled.  _ You’re  _ the great Fiddleford fucking McGucket, from the great West Coast Tech, and the school board needs you.” Ford sighed and headed for the door. “I’m just Stanford Pines.” 

On his way out, McGucket reached for Ford’s upper arm. “Ford, you know you —”

“Let go of me, McGucket. The dean is expecting me.”

He shrugged McGucket off and headed down the hall, and after a sorrowful shrug from Vanessa, they both left for the administrative building, leaving McGucket sat on the bed, waiting. 

__________________________________________________________________________

The last time Ford had been called to the principal’s office, he didn’t know why.

He only recalled the feeling of insecurity as the other classmates stared down him as he left the classroom with Stan. After all, they never called Ford. It was almost always Stanley, Stanley the troublemaker, Stanley the vagrant and the vandal and it never really applied to him past their shenanigans in elementary school.

This felt a lot like that, only now he was heading in there alone.

He knocked on the door and entered at the grumble of “Come in.”

The office itself was thinly decorated, with only a master’s degree on one wall and a family photo on another. In the middle of the room, set before a thinly-blinded window facing the blinding setting sun, was an office chair, a scratched and unevenly-stained wooden desk, and a velvet chair for guests, by which Dean Marson was extending an arm. 

“Pines, please, sit down.”

Ford approached the chair and was stunned by it’s discomfort the moment he fell into the seat.

Marson approached the window, and still standing, smiled at Ford. “How are you doing, my boy?”

The causality of the greeting was a surprise for Ford and he cleared his throat. “You…. You didn’t call me here about last month’s demonstration, sir?”

“Demonstration? Ah. You mean that vulgar display for which the student responsible will pay dearly, I assure you. No, I did not call you in for that, but while we’re here, if you do, by any chance, have something you want to tell, then by all means, Mr. Pines, do tell.”

Ford fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat. The light streaming in from the dingy windows suddenly felt way hotter than it should be and he played with the cuff of his shirt with a film reel of thoughts playing through his mind

_ (expulsion — he’s fine — crooked teeth — Stop — West Coast Tech — he’s fine — yellow eyes — the simpler lies, the better, Sixer— Stop.) _

“No sir. Nothing. I was just … curious.”

Marson’s beguiling grin flashed into a glare but for a second before he turned away towards the window, towards the glaring light streaming through the blinds.

“Very well…. Do you remember what I told you last month, Mr. Pines?”

Ford sat deeper into the chair, brushing the stiff, worn-down  velvet in the armrest with his thumb, stretching to recall. “You said… not to fall in with a bad crowd.”

“Yes. Yes I did. And I can’t help but be afraid that this school placed you in a rather sour predicament in that regard.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s rather hard for you to avoid trouble when you’ve been assigned room and board with it, am I right?”

Ford mulled it over for a second, swallowing his nerves hard for a second before warbling out, “You mean McGucket, sir?”

Marson exhaled at the name and started pacing before the dingy windowsill, back and forth and back and forth, letting his ideas flow freely.

“Look... he’s a character Pines. I’ll admit that. A loud and rather enticing one at that. But I hope you know better than to be getting involved in his shenanigans. I mean, we all know he’s missing a screw or two, and if you ask me, he’s less than a model citizen. I mean he’s bright as all hell, but that queer shouldn’t be —”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir. Can I go?” Ford spat as he half-lifted himself from the chair before meeting Marson’s steely gaze and 

_ (Don’t sound to hasty Sixer you’ll look suspicious just take a breath and go with it agree if you have too just some small talk and then you’re home free come on Sixer stay calm you could do it) _

“Please, stay for a while, Pines. There’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

Ford lowered his body back against the lumpy chair with a slow exhale. “Yes, sir?”

“You see, Pines, we’ve been hearing rumors in your dorm building of an occupant who does not attend the university seen lurking around your dorm building. I was wondering if you knew of any suspicious activity.”

“I — uh…”

_ Play dumb Sixer you don’t know what he means yet  _

“Can I get a description, sir?”

“Well, of course. You see, you might even know him — he’s a friend of McGucket’s. He’ easy to spot, I assure you. I mean, for future reference, he’s a wetback with a missing finger. Not really something you could miss.””

_ Easy to spot and a non-student occupant sixer — Carlos _

Ford’s breath hitched and he gripped on to the armrest with a newfound strength. 

“I don’t know anyone like that, sir.”

Marson sat in his chair and leaned forward into the silence gazing closely at Ford’s expression as the later forced his face into a neutral bewildered expression 

_You don’t know him you have no idea you don’t know Carlos you don’t know Carlos you don’t know Carlos_ _Just smile and nod Sixer just smile and nod yeah he’s a prick but just smile and nod_

“Good!” Marson exclaimed, leaning even further with a predatory grin. “Because if you did know something, of course, you’d come and tell me right?”

_ Just smile and nod Sixer just smile and nod _

Ford smiled and nodded.

“Wonderful, Pines. Because, as you know, boarding a non-student without faculty position is, as you know, rooms for expulsion, correct?”

And  _ there  _ was the magic word and Ford felt his breath stop and his lungs go flat, because that wasn’t something he could let happen, and that his hands were clammy and sweaty and cold and  _ why were his hands so goddamn cold  _ and Carlos didn’t deserve this he was just another guy rolled up in McGucket’s life, in a being so bright you couldn’t really escape it once he smiled at you, and who could blame anyone for loving the guy and —  _ Stop. _

“Yes, sir. I know,” Ford finally spat out, watching the expression on Marson’s face flicker between satisfaction and distaste. 

“Before you go, Pines, have you, by any chance, been about town this last month?”

_ Answer honestly if you can Sixer, but no more info than you need to spill. _

“Just today, Sir. But not before then. Just been studying in my room, and with midterms coming up, you know I, well, I, um—”  _ enough, Sixer, stop talking  _

Ford swallowed down the excess words. 

“But not last week, Pines?”

“No, sir.”

Marson stood to his feet again and stalked around the desk to approach the velvet chair. 

“You see Pines, I’m only asking because I could have sworn I saw you last week —”

_ Stan Stan Stan Already ruining my life again  _ **_Stan_ **

“—and from what I could tell you were around some rather disruptive individuals.”

Ford nodded and met Marson’s gaze. “I can assure you, that wasn’t me, sir,” he said truthfully.

Marson stopped to Ford’s right and nodded back. “I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t really close enough to know for sure. All I know is, it would be a crying shame if it were.”

Ford looked down toward his shoes. “And why is that, sir?”

“Well, let’s just say this person… well… he was being rather indecent with another man. In broad daylight, no less. It was rather compromising. You’d think that kind of behavior… well, I think I’m at liberties to say with a keen mind like yours, it ought to be punishable by death, I say. But what do I know? I’m a simple man, Pines, a logical man, and a man of good faith. And aside from the faith, with you and your family being… well, you know... I’m sure you are too. I try not to judge, but some things, well, they just shouldn’t be.”

_ You can’t let him fucking say these things about family Sixer and this is who we are for crying out loud Sixer and you should punch his lights out right now Sixer just go and go and go and go and  _

Ford swallowed again, and nodded, seemingly against his will, because how was he suppose to agree with that without agreeing what was he even supposed to say because yeah stan Stan  _ Stan  _  was a pain and he didn’t want him here but he was never supposed to be even having this discussion and 

“Like that McGucket fellow. Don’t get too close to him, Pines. Not when you have your studies to pay attention to. Am I right? He’s queer as a 3-dollar bill, and not worth getting kicked out of school for.”

Ford couldn’t force any words in answer out of himself, all he could do is nod. Even in his head he wasn’t answering “yes” to any questions Marson was asking, just the questions in his head of Do you wanna go? And  _ Is Stan okay _ ? And  _ Marson has no fucking right to be saying any of this, right _ ? And  _ Is McGucket worth getting kicked from Backupsmore for _ ? And  _ is Stan?  _ And a little bit of   _ Maybe pops didn’t need to know he was a queer but Ford knew, Ford knew all along, and he should have been there for Stan, right _ ? And  _ He should have been there to make sure Stan was okay and he wasn’t and he understood what Stan meant and what he was going through but he just pretended he didn’t, right _ ? 

“Right.” Ford finally said, rising out of the chair without even thinking about it, ready to start his about-face for the door.

Marson nodded and shook Ford’s hand. “You’re a good kid, Ford, especially given your family and their type.”

“What do you mean by—”  _ you know what he means by that Sixer you know don’t pretend you don't  _ “— at any rate, I need to go sir. I have… um… studying to do.”

Before Marson could even utter the goodbyes, Ford was out the door and running past a stunned Vanessa, past the hallway, and going and going and going towards the dorm.

________________________________

When Ford slammed himself through the cracked door and skidded to a stop in front of McGucket’s bed, he bounced on his feels with an energy he didn’t know he had as McGucket lifted his head with an air of defeat.

“So.” McGucket looked up at him. “Did you… did you tell them what they wanted to know?”

Ford shook his head, finally settling on his own bed. “No, Fidds. I’m many things, but I’m no rat. In fact,” he said, meeting McGucket’s gaze, “I think I want to join the crew.”


	6. Raising Greg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: This is probably full of typos - I will go through it in the afternoon. Sleep now, edit later

On the bus, McGucket explained that when the crew _didn’t_ meet in McGucket’s dorm in a flurry of breaking and entering, they met in the store-room/basement of the local rec center, where the owner owed McGucket a favor and basically let them conduct their business rent-free whenever they wanted it.

McGucket’s was working his hardest to assure Ford the whole ride there that _it’s gonna be fine, I mean, sure they don’ like you, and maybe you can be a bit harsh sometimes and maybe they might be a bit mad, okay they’ll_ **_definitely_ ** _be a bit mad, but hey, that’s life, right Ford? I mean, don’ get me wrong, they hate your guts,_ **_especially Chad_ ** _, but they’ll come around, right? Right? And even if they don’t, I mean, who am I kiddin’ they probably won’t,_ and so on and so forth, with his knee bouncing up and down even after they climbed off the bus near downtown.

The rec center was as unassuming as they come, and Ford would have thought it a lovely, normal place, if the owner hadn’t instantly hamboned a message to Fiddleford the second they walked in, eyeing Ford suspiciously (to which Fiddleford hamboned back and released a clucking noise.)

They were then led down a dark staircase, and Ford felt briefly like he was about to lose one or both of his kidneys, when Fiddleford threw the door open unceremoniously, (as though he hadn’t nearly had a panic attack on the way there) with a call of “Hey crew! Guess whatFord’sJoiningUsIsn’tThatNiceGladYouThinkSo,Cool!”

The basement was cast in the lowlight of three (3) desk lamps, dim and glowing orange, and was roughly the size of their dorm room, but while Ford was accustomed to a clutter generally reserved for dirty laundry and towers of physics books (late for return to the library), the space here was filled with the whirring of motorized electronics and paper balls scribbled with haphazard plans for _things_ and the like.

Taking stock of what he was up against, Ford gave a quick count in his mind:

  * Two (2) potted plants on the windowsill, each being a variety of mint ( _Mentha piperita_ and _Mentha spicata_ , respectively, he threw into the mental notepad, for thoroughness) and both looking well-watered, if a bit brown from the soil salt-content, but he digressed
  * One (1) barefoot woman, humming and laying on the floor in the corner, with long, straight blond hair containing three (3) twigs and countless blades of grass (and somewhere in his head, Ford remembered her name as Sarah, and remembered that whenever he spotted her on campus she always seemed to move like music was playing, and that at some point she had sat on his bed, and he felt a hollow giddiness)
  * Three (3) desks, _previously noted_ , he noted, each with a dim lamp, and each covered in papers and buried in machinery and a pile of levies and pulleys and motherboards and copper wiring ( _each_ _to be counted more carefully and categorized into subgroups later_ , he noted again)
  * Two (2) joke books on the nearest desk, which were two too many for Ford’s liking, and while he refused to know more about their contents, their existence was noted and his wariness grew accordingly
  * One (1) quiet Hispanic young man with hair starting to curl on the ends and verging on too long for Ford’s personal hygiene standards, but nonetheless looking better-fed, and with a slightly less subtle smile on his lips since the last Ford had seen of him, sitting on one (1) frankly _filthy_ rubber mat on the floor in the corner (and for a moment, he stopped with the count, and just nodded in greeting, and couldn’t help the jolt of relief when Carlos nodded back, with something swirling in his gut that felt like _acceptance and understanding and even kinsmanship_ starting to bloom, before turning back to inventory)
  * One (1) indescribably angry-looking woman leaning against the wall, with full dark eyebrows (one [1] raised and arched) and six (6) piercings looped through her nostrils and one (1) more for posterity through her septum, still red and angry from recency, (and mentally, Ford jotted down her name as Vanessa, with an uncertain frowny face closely following, because behind her shock of dark curly hair, she started to glare the moment he walked in)
  * Two (2) long tubes-like devices shaped like cannon barrels in the corner, each with a mechanism that looked a lot like the trigger to a handgun bolted to the narrow ends, which screamed _things_ more than almost anything else in the room
  * One (1) tall and toned, freckled man sulking by the wall, with tresses stretched back into a sandy-blond ponytail, who Ford noted, quite bitterly and scientifically, as _Chadus Ignoramus,_ adding with a mental flourish that this elusive creature probably can’t multiply past the times-12 tables and that he had started to march toward the door—



“What’s he doing here, McGucket?” Chad asked, and Ford couldn’t help the defensiveness rising to his throat as his face curled into a scowl. The other three rose to their feet and grouped in the middle of the room, guarded and suspicious, except Sarah, who beamed and smiled and never really stopped humming —

“Well guys,” Fiddleford said, addressing the entire room, “Ford here is going to join the crew. It’s been decided that —”

“Decided? By _who_?” Chad asked, looking at the raised eyebrows popping up around the room. The others said nothing, but an unease washed over the atmosphere, and Ford was forced to start thinking that this probably would not be the welcoming parade he might had ~~anticipated~~ hoped for as he raced to recall the specifics of their last meeting and — “Did any of us agree to this?”

“It was decided by Ford and myself, Chad,” McGucket responded, voice wavering on the verge of prickliness (and _protectiveness_ , Ford didn’t think at all, _no-siree_ , but damned if he was gonna sit here and let Fiddleford _need to_ ** _convince_** this group that he would be an asset — _hell_ they would be so **lucky** to have him in the crew)

“Look, _Chad_ ,” Ford began, not even hiding the disdain, because honestly why bother at this point, “I want to help out with the cause and —”

“Oh please, _spare me_ . We _all_ know you don’t want to be here. Just admit it, you don’t like us, and you certainly don’t like _me_ and —”

“You’re right.” Ford lightly shoved McGucket to the side, taking a step forward to meet Chad’s glare. “I don’t like _you_.”

A low “ooooooooooh” emanated from Sarah, and Ford could have sworn he heard something like a snicker leave Carlos, but it must have been a trick of an overactive imagination because God knows that kid was perpetually joyless

(but the musings were gone before he could comment because Chad had stepped forward and laid a rough **shove** at Ford’s chest and Ford’s fist had already began to close, and really there was no stopping that Chad was about to get knocked the fuck out, really, it was just one of those things destined to happen, he thought, and _it couldn’t be helped_ he thought, and)

McGucket rushed forward, shoving the two apart before anything that looking like anything could formulate and quickly spewed a short and breathy “Ford didn’t mean that, now didya, Ford?”

“Yes. I did.”

“ _No you didn’t_ ” he muttered through clenched teeth, keeping them both arm’s-length apart.

“Yes he did, McGucket, and you know it! Remember when he stormed our meeting last time?” Chad stepped against McGucket’s hand, leaning forward to get as close to spitting in Ford’s face as he could, while the rest of the crew hung back, looking very tired of this whole thing, with something that looked a lot like boredom spreading on their faces, complete with eye-rolls and sighs and _what are you gonna do, right?_

“You mean the meeting you were holding in my dorm _without my knowledge_ ?” Ford spat, dryly, leaning forward himself, so their faces were inches apart with Mcgucket struggling between them, sandwiched between two seething piles of toxic masculinity. “Yeah I do recall, _as a matter of fact_.”

“It was Guck’s dorm first, bozo! And you came in, and you mocked everything we stood for! You think our cause is stupid!”

“No I did not! I called your _methods_ stupid, and right now I’m calling _you_ stupid, Chad, so you can —”

McGucket got his shoulders free and shoved both boys across the room, apart from one another with a pig-caller’s shout of “THA’S ENOUGH!”

Silence washed over them and Chad harrumphed, and Ford rolled his eyes, and everyone was left with the pitiful remains of what was sure to be a long fight, now doomed to an anticlimactic end.

“If you boys can stop actin’ like children for three ever-lovin’ _seconds —_ ” McGucket’s eyes raked through the crew once more, landing on Chad squarely before he finished “— I think you’ll find that Ford’s input can really be helpful!”

Chad threw his arms up in exasperation “ _How_ , though?! We’re supposed to be laying low, right? Until the admins let us resume demonstrating? How the fuck are we supposed to do that with the Strangler on our crew? That’s the _opposite of laying low!_ ”

The silence congealed into something less palpable, and Fiddleford’s breath hitched, and all eyes were trained on Ford in an instant, and through the confusion and the ( _eyes, eyes staring)_ he instinctively threw his hands behind his back and asked, “The Strangler?”

Eyes widened, Carlos’ mouth curled into regret and Vanessa’s glare ebbed for a millisecond and even Sarah stopped smiling, but Chad just let out a surprised bark of laughter and slapped a hand against his forehead. “Oh fuck, Guck, did you _not tell him_?”

“Not tell me what?” Ford asked, sounding more wounded than he could help, and he looked at McGucket, face twisted with guilt, who tossed a sorry look over his shoulder at him.

“It never really seemed important to let you know.”

“Let me know what? Fidds?” and when Fiddleford looked down, arms drooping lamely to his sides, Ford’s stare bounced to everyone’s faces, but the only one willing to look at him was Chad, unfriendly and smirking.

“What? Did you think people were avoiding you at school because of your weird-ass fingers?”

Ford glanced down at his fingers wiggled them, the unsaid _Yes_ hanging in the air, because honestly, that’s the reason _everyone_ always avoided him, between teachers in elementary school and his neighbors at the synagogue to extended family and passerby on campus, it always came back to freakish hands and two-too-many fingers, and he thought briefly of joke books and beaches and _six-fingered-freak_ before looking up

“What do you mean?”

“Oh _please_ ,” Chad spat, looking much too pleased to be telling this. “This is Backupsmore — it’s weirdness central! So what if you have six fingers? I’m pretty sure there’s a rat under the campus bleachers with _at least_ eight heads! No one gives a fuck about your fingers, Ford. What everyone’s hung up on is the fact that you’re a lunatic picking fights with Erickson and who fuckin' _splashes acid_ in people’s faces!”

“I-I, uh —” The bravado leaked itself from Ford’s lungs and he was left with a nausea swirling in his stomach that felt a lot like shame (but nothing like regret, because honestly, who could regret the acid incident, _the fucker had it coming Sixer_ ) but a lot more like the realization that, for once, his fingers weren’t the cause of the animosity, and it was just _him_ ~~it was always just _him_~~

“So when rumors start that you’re a notorious six-fingered strangler from the underground of New Jersey, half the student body just goes thinking ‘Well, that’s Backupsmore for ya, letting in the criminals as _always’”_ and Ford doesn’t need to tell Chad to shut up, because Sarah had already grabbed Chad’s arm and pulled him back, shaking her head, and in the lengthy silence, even Chad’s energy starts to ebb away.

“We don’t believe it though, Other Ford. We’re, like, 90% sure you’re not a murderer,” Sarah said, and the smile she flashed was small but resolute and genuine, and Ford’s stomach was still churning, but at least he found the strength in him to look at McGucket again, whose eyes were still trained on the ground.

“If it helps I’ve been telling everyone I know to cut that ‘Strangler’ crap out,” McGucket muttered before looking at him sadly, and the guilt’s still there, but Ford couldn't even find it in himself to be angry anymore, because what could he do, so what if people think he’s a monster, _God know’s he’s thought it himself_

And he squashed down the voice that’s saying _But this isn't the same kind of monster, Sixer_ to look back at Chad, who’s looking less pleased with himself by the second.

“Look Ford,” Chad started, wrestling from Sarah’s iron grip. The pleasure is gone, and Chad’s face has morphed into something resembling with guilt, but not a lot of it. “I know all this sucks to hear, but —”

“No, Chad, I’m glad you told me,” Ford said, taken aback by how small his voice sounded. “I’d rather know sooner than later, and no one else wanted to let me know, so.. y’know… It’s fine,” he ended weakly, before remembering why someone had even _needed_ to tell him, and finding the bravado again, and looking Chad square in the eye. “But back to my earlier point., I _do_ want to join the crew, and I want to see how I could help. If laying low is your concern, then, to be honest, I’d rather not have anyone know I’ve joined to begin with. The dean already has me in his sights, and I’m not in a very good position to rock the boat….”

It’s Carlos who speaks up then, stepping forward with a small voice. “If it’s down to a vote, then I’m fine with him.”

He looks to the other faces, and it’s Vanessa who puts up a hand.

“If I’m right in thinking Sarah’s fine with it —” and Sarah nods, vigorously, bouncing on the balls of her bare feet with enthusiasm “—then I guess that’s a yes.” It’s all she’s said since Ford walked into the room, and he could swear he could still hear a tinge of suspicion, though, he supposes, that might just be how Vanessa is wired.

And Chad says nothing, because at this point it’s five (5) to one (1), and he just takes a few steps towards the wall and plops down on a frankly filthy rubber mat.

The moment dissipates, but Chad still finds some kind of energy daring in him, because he retaliates, “Sorry about the push back, Other Ford, but let’s all be honest here: who can blame me? I mean, you’re not really Crew-material.”

At this, McGucket sputters and places his hands on his hips, “What on God’s green earth are you goin’ on about? Ford’s plenty Crew-material!”

“Oh yeah! Look at that mustard-yellow sweater-vest. He’s _a wild-man_!”

Ford didn’t care to stoop as low as to get offended, but he got awful close, and croaked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look, Ford, I’m sure you’re like, smart or whatever, but chicks don’t dig guys in mustard sweater-vests. They like guys in leather, who, like, play guitar and —”

“I - uh - I can play piano!”

Chad rolled his eyes. “Yeah.. that’s not a sexy instrument.”

“Y’all hush,” McGucket said, with a snort. “Piano’s a plenty sexy instrument.”

Even Ford, with all his obliviousness, caught the lie here. “I mean, it really isn’t,” he admitted.

“That’s what I get for defending you. Can’t a Yank just take a compliment?”

Chad got to his feet again. “The point still stands that you shoulda conferred with us first, Fidds. We can’t just grab any square that can add numbers to help out. What we do here is important work!”

“You glued dildos to a wall, Chad,” Ford muttered under his breath, and everyone in the room audibly huffed, resolute to ignore that statement.

Chad looked like he was about to restart the brawl where it was left, but something halted his steps and a grin cracked across his face.

“Oh… that reminds me.” He walked blithely past Ford towards the desk closest to the door, opening one of the drawers. He turned back toward the group, carrying something swaddled in velvet fabric. “Initiation time.”

At this, everyone perked up noticeably. Ford turned in time to see a wicked smile make it’s way down Fiddleford’s face. It unsettled him more than anything else.

“Initiation?” Ford asked with uncertainty, taking a step back with a wobbling voice.

“”Well yeah, Other Ford,” Chad replied. “If you’re one of us, you gotta take the baggage that comes with it. New crew members get babysitting duty.”

“Babysitting?”

“That’s right, Jersey,” Fiddleford said, gingerly taking the swaddled bundle from Chad’s arm and shaking with held-back laughter. “You get to take care of Greg.”

Sarah and Vanessa ball their fists as Fiddleford walks closer with the bundle, and chant lowly as he makes his way to Ford. “Greg. _Greg. Greg. Greg._ **_Greg_ ** …”

“Greg?” Ford asks. “You guys lost me.”

“He was named after the local wise man who lives in the alleyways,” Sarah said lowly, as Vanessa’s chanting filled the room. “Greg is bless-ed and Greg is pure.”

“And now he is _your_ duty. It’s only fair, Ford,” McGucket says, stopping squarely in front of him and holding the bundle out for him to take. “Don’t be too scared though. We’ve all had Greg-duty. Carlos was the most recent.”

“It was a responsibility I was honored to bear,” Carlos said from the corner, all-too-seriously, with a solemn nod.

The girls continued their ceremonious chanting in the background as Ford lifted the bundle, which was more fabric than anything, and started to shed the velvet away. He started to get a feel for whatever Greg was _and whatever it is, it’s long, and… vaguely cucumber shaped? It’s definitely hard and… and …_ **_Oh God_ **

Ford peeled away the last of the fabric to reveal a veiny, flesh-colored dildo with a smiley face scrawled on the pale-pink head in permanent marker.

He reeled in disgust, jumping and fumbling with the dildo, and instantly was crowded by every member of the crew, with their arms out.

“Be careful!” Fiddleford screamed, in a rare moment of fear and fury.

“I-I’m sorry?” Ford shouted back, feeling stupid once he got a firm grasp around the dildo, until he finally grasped the situation he was in. “Wait. I’m not sorry! What is this? I’m babysitting a-a—”

“You’re babysitting _Greg_ .” Vanessa said, gaze steely, like she _dared_ Ford to say anything, to speak out loud how ridiculous this was and how it was _a plastic dildo guys, come on_

“Riiiight... I… uh… how, pray-tell, does one babysit… Greg?”

“Well, Jersey,” McGucket started, gleefully and a bit maniacally, “For one thing, he is never to touch the ground, and must be cleaned everyday, especially if used —”

“Not that anyone would _use_ Greg!” Chad cut in, with scandal dripping from his voice. “He’s part of the family!”

“And you must have him on your person at all times! He’s clingy and needs affection,” McGucket said with grave finality.

“You can’t honestly expect me to carry this thing around _school —_ ” Ford started, but then Sarah rushed forward, inches from his face, plunging a finger against his chest.

“We said _he’s clingy and needs affection._ Got it?” Her voice was raw with an aggressiveness reserved for mother lions killing for their cubs, and Ford gulped, nodding vigorously in response.

She seemed satisfied with that reaction, and nodded, instantly breaking out into her contagious smile and twirling away from him, humming, her hair and the sticks tangled in it hitting him in the face as she did so.

“So…” he looked at the dildo again, wondering what how he could carry him — _IT, it’s an IT, don’t you start too_ — “I need to care for… Greg… for how long?”

“Well, a week is customary,” McGucket began —

“But it’s been about a year since he got any sunlight, so I say we give the little guy two weeks out in the world,” Chad added, with the biggest shit-eating grin that Ford could have ever seen

“That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s the price for joining us, Buster,” Vanessa quipped, but even _her_ glare had softened with the situation, and she smirked when he gaped back at her. “We all had to do it. It’s your turn.”

“But… but I…”

“So it’s settled!” McGucket said, with finality, smiling with a fervent nod and guiding Ford into a wooden chair, for the proper back support one might need while holding a baby.

“If anything happened to Greg I would kill you in your sleep,” Carlos said from his corner with a somber certainty, and Ford couldn’t help but believe him as he clutched Greg against his chest, patting it twice, softly and awkwardly. _Pat pat._

“Welcome to fatherhood,” Sarah added, giving a congratulatory handshake and looking on the verge of tears. “He has your eyes, I swear.”

“Yeah. Great.” Ford considered throwing Greg on the floor, but knowing his luck, it would bounce off the concrete and hit him in the nose, so he continued patting him awkwardly, wondering what specific mistake in his life had led him down the path to be the adoptive parent of a plastic phallus.

“You’re awfully cute together,” Chad added, sickly sweet, before something wicked churned in his eye. “Good thing too, because a lot of people are gonna see you tonight.”

Ford and Fiddleford both perked up at this, looking first at each other, until Fiddleford broke through the initial confusion.

“What’s tonight?”

“Aww, don’t tell me you forgot already, Guck,” Vanessa said, elbowing his shoulder lightly. “Party at Dawn’s place? We agreed to this, like, weeks ago!”

At the sound of _party_ , Ford instantly tensed up, because he didn’t really _do_ parties, he wasn’t the Pines that was built for that, and he wasn’t about to start liking them now, but before he could even protest Fiddleford had already started shaking his head.

“The party’s not tonight! We don’t have to go until the…”

“The 26th? That’s tonight!” Sarah said, happily, twirling around them tunelessly.

And then it was Fiddleford’s turn to collapse in a desk-chair and as he placed his head in his hands, his knee started bouncing to dizzying frequency, and Ford might have been impressed if he wasn’t getting a headache trying to keep count. It was then that the gravity of the situation had started to make itself known, and Ford found himself shaking his head as well.

“Wait,” he said, “you don’t honestly expect me to carry a dildo around with me at a school party?”

Chad rolled his eyes. “We said _at all times_ , didn’t we?”

“People could see him!” _It_ , something in his mind reminded him, but that part was getting weaker every second.

“Not if you keep him somewhere out of sight,” Chad said with a wink, and Ford blanched, but Sarah added as she danced, “Yes! Like a bag or a purse, or a soft, warm pocket! Pocket, pocky-pocket!”

Ford was only slightly abated at that, but Fiddleford looked none the better.

“Look guys,” Fiddleford said. “I know I agreed, but I don’t think I could make it tonight. You see, I have this history test tomorrow.”

Ford instantly jumped out of the chair, “Wait, we share that class — we have a history test tomorrow?!”

“I — uh….um…” Fiddleford began, before Vanessa rolled her eyes.

“No Ford, you don’t, Guck’s just tryna weasle out of this. Guck, you know we need you there if we’re getting anything outta Dawn.”

“Come on, guys,” Fiddleford whined, “We’ve got stuff to fight for, things to do. There’s no time for _parties_.” If Ford didn't know any better, he’d have guessed that Fiddleford didn’t say the last word with disdain, but with a bit of fear.

“I thought the point of protesting was so that we didn’t need to be martyrs for a cause,” Chad muttered.

“Skippin’ a party ain’t martyrin’ yerself, Chad. Y’all can live without a night of debauchery if it means we can focus on what’s important.”

“But you need to negotiate with Dawn, or we won’t get anything important done. We’ve already had this discussion, Fiddleford,” Vanessa said testily.

“Who’s Dawn?” Ford asked, figuring this was as good as any a time to jump in with his backlog of questions.

“She’s president of the business club.” Carlos said from his corner. “We put any purchases for demonstrations through her first. If you wanna find a deal for wholesale, she’s your gal.”

“And by purchases, you mean….” Ford pondered.

“What, did you think a bunch of sophomores could afford 398 dildos and enough military-grade adhesive to stick them to a wall? We’re passionate, but we’re not rich,” Vanessa said.

“So… you set it up with Dawn, and then she organizes a wholesale deal with a local… dildo manufacturer? How does she know a dildo manufacturer?”

“She knows everyone,” Carlos said simply, like that was answer enough. “But to get a deal with Dawn, she needs to owe you one, and the only one here who she owes anything to is Fiddleford. He fixed her car up a few times last year.”

“So he needs to go to this party… wait, what’s wrong with the party?”

“Nothing’s wrong with _this_ party, per se,” Vanessa said, eyes flashing sympathetically to Fiddleford. “Fiddleford just… isn’t a fan of social things.”

“But he… he leads protests in front of people all the time.”

“Demonstrations are planned,” Fiddleford gasped, sounding nauseous and a little irrate. “Every word, every step — I always know exactly what I’m going to say, and how to say it. But parties, and other things… I dunno, Ford, it’s just not my cup of tea.”

“But he’ll be fine,” Chad said, nonchalantly. “A few sips of liquid courage, and he always is, I swear. Anxiety schmanxiety.” Fiddleford nodded, but the way he gulped still made Ford uneasy

(but it was the same kind of uneasiness that came with any mention of alcohol since Stan had left, because all alcohol really came with, at least in Ford’s mind, was his dad and cheap beer and whizzing belts and crying mothers and— _not now, Sixer_ )

“So if you guys use Dawn for your deals, what manufacturer are you trying to get through to?” Ford asked, turning to Vanessa.

“A slaughterhouse.”

“Why? What could…” Ford’s eyes widened with realization and he started shaking his head. “But.. but it already came in the mail. Like, a gallon.”

“Gonna need a lot more than a gallon, Ford,” Fiddleford said dejectedly, knee still bouncing.

“Why would you need — oh yeah —”

“ _Things_ ,” everyone in the room said at once, and Ford felt like he was going to tear his own hair out, when Mcgucket finally sat up straight, his knee bouncing at a more sustainable rate, and turned towards him.

“Wait Ford. You’re part of the crew, now… maybe it’s about time you got filled in. Hey Sarah… show him the _thing_.”

And no, Ford absolutely, _positively_ did _not_ squeal at that moment, he just exhaled at a high-pitch in a manly fashion, because how could he not, he was finally going to get _answers_

(because answers to long-held questions were like water to a man dying of thirst to Ford, that was just his nature)

And when Sarah grabbed a single sheet of paper from among the sea of papers on the desk closest to her incessant twirling, and then dropped it in Ford’s hand not currently cradling Greg, he had to withhold a gasp as he carefully unfolded it.

He glanced over the paper, and the diagrams and notes therein. They were hastily scribbled in Fiddleford’s wispy chicken-scratch, but the formulas were meticulous and the arithmetic was impeccable, with a straggling of quadruple-checked equations scribbled in the margins. Ford’s eyes bounced from one part of the multi-stepped plan to another, and for a solid minute his expression was flashing between amused and horrified, at a rate that would give any lesser man emotional whiplash, before he finally looked up at the rightfully expectant faces of the group around him.

“ _Serious_ enough for you, Ford?” Mcgucket asked with a smug grin planted square on his face.

Ford looked back at the paper, and huff of laughter left him as utter shock compressed his lungs, and all he could do was nod.

“This is genius.”

__________________________________________

Even after Fiddleford had gone upstairs with Chad and Carlos to warm up the van, Ford was clutching the blueprints.

He had exhausted the details of the sheet of paper handed to him, and he had moved onto the rest of desk, stifling through older drawings and diagrams. Eventually, he had come across the original plans and maths behind those tube-shaped devices

(which he learned, through crumpled ball after crumpled ball of trajectory-based math, were Dildo Cannons that Fiddleford had designed in order to launch the dildos on the wall of the building —“the trick was all in getting the cannon to calculate the arch automatically, according to each dildo’s weight; it’s my greatest accomplishment if I do say so myself”)

The plans _never ended_. Fiddleford hadn’t been kidding about meticulous planning for every protest — if there was a slight miscalculation, or even an inkling of a doubt that something wouldn’t succeed, the plan would be scrapped, crumpled in the corner, snuffed out with whatever branch of genius had led Fiddleford there.

And they were _all_ Fiddleford’s plans

More so than before, Ford had come to appreciate the reverence they all felt for McGucket. The man was a visionary, with the mind you could either appreciate or live the rest of your days fearing

(and if Ford felt jealous, he didn’t let himself fixate on it, but it was a strange thing to know that he wasn’t the smartest person in the room, and not the good kind of strange, either, and honestly that was the kind of thing that took getting used to, and if he sounded egotistical thinking that, it’s only because he had to be, because i _f he wasn’t the smart one, than who was he_? If he couldn’t be Ford, the boy genius, did that just leave him _as one of two Stans_ — **Stop** )

“I don’t get it.”

Ford looked up to see Vanessa standing squarely in front of him, eyebrow cocked and glare back in full action. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sarah snoring on the mat on the floor.

“What don’t you get?” he asked Vanessa, turning back towards the uncrumpled paper he was holding his hands.

“You were about to sell Fidds out. You know it. I know it. Even he knew it. You were gonna go in there, you were gonna sit in Marson’s cushy chairs, and you were gonna snitch. Why didn’t you?”

“The chairs were quite uncomfortable.” Ford didn't raise his gaze from the diagrams.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Vanessa had stepped closer, intruding on Ford’s personal space to the point where he had no choice but to address her, and one look at her suspicious eyes told him that she wasn’t leaving until he told her what she wanted to know.

(and Ford could pretend he didn’t know, but the truth of the matter is, this wasn’t a matter of not knowing why, it’s a matter of not knowing how to say it.

Because Stanley was ~~thoughtless and careless and gay and~~ this hurricane that managed to blow into every window and door of Ford’s future and tear it all asunder, but he was still his brother, right? And maybe he was rough around the edges, and jumped before looking, and maybe he never applied himself and was destined to scrape barnacles until he lost to the draft and lost a leg in Nam — maybe _that_ Stan was his brother, once, but whoever it was who ruined Stanford’s future sure as fuck couldn’t be his brother

and _I said I was sorry Sixer_  

and **no, actually, you didn’t Stanley, or if you did, it came out sounding more like** **_maybe there's a silver lining_ ** **Stan**

and _but I’m your brother, Sixer_

and **but that doesn’t matter now, because you stopped being my brother in Jersey and started being Steve Pinington in infomercials or a boxer on the run from the mob**

But the dean hadn’t been talking about a man on the run or an underground boxer who refused to throw fights who kisses men with long blonde mustaches with bullshit names like _Jimmy Snakes_ — Marson had been talking about a queer Jewish pain-in-the-ass, and that described ~~Ford~~ Stan way more than it described Steve, and if joining the Crew and doing _things_ was a way to spite a force like that, t _hen_ **_sign me the fuck up_ **

And Ford’s tongue felt swollen and sticky in his mouth, because how, really, does one say that they’re trying to defend a part of them they don’t even like, a brother that they’re dead set on not ~~loving remembering~~ thinking about anymore?)

He realized with a start, that Vanessa was still there, hand on her hips, waiting expectantly for an answer he didn’t know how to form.

He looked back to the blueprints. “I just really hate the war.”

___________________________

 

Ford didn’t have a lot for options left for attire, let alone for attire to go to _new_ places, where he most definitely didn’t want to be, but here he was, in his dorm room bathroom, squeezing into a jet black turtleneck that was too warm, even for the November chill, and trying in vain to smooth out the wrinkles that creased into the back from being stuffed in a suitcase for three and a half months.

When he had found it, nestled in there with the photographs that he didn’t want to see and the books he had extra copies of on the shelf, it had been a godsend — after all, Ford’s clothing choices to a house party were slim, and _clean_ choices were slimmer.

Chad had given them an awkward and long lift back in his van, dropping them off at the dorm to get ready with the promise to return in an hour with a keg and the rest of the Crew, but that had been thirty minutes ago, and most of that time had been spent in a dizzy rush, sniffing everything remotely resembling fabric to see if it was suitable for wear in public

(not much was, other than the curtains, and while he briefly considered wearing them, he had to admit they clashed with his complexion, and so he thought better of it, leaving them by the window.)

He pulled the fabric along his back taut, bracing his foot against the Johnson as he did so, but when he let go, the sweater snapped back in place, the crease as prominent as ever.

But then — _miracles happen_  — out of the corner of his eye was a towel beneath which the edge of an old black blazer was sticking out, still clean despite being found on the bathroom floor of two college boys. And so he put it on, covering the wrinkles on his back, and looking quite dapper, if he did say so himself.

He remembered wearing the blazer after his high school graduation ceremony, sitting by himself in a sea of chairs once the festivities were over.

 _You look quite nice in that_ , his mother had said, once she found him, once they were both pretending to be okay with his then-fresh solitude.

 _Yeah, because when had mom ever lied to us, ever_ , the voice muttered in the back of his head, and Ford responded by grabbing Greg from the bathroom counter and walking out, indignant at his reflection and wiping the smudges from his glasses with the smooth front of the sweater.

When he walked out of the bathroom, Fidds was still where he was thirty minutes ago — laying on his back with a smoking joint between his teeth, leg hanging off the bed, and knee bouncing frantically.  

(though, the knee was moving slower than before he lit up, and at least his fingers were off of his hair, clutching his thighs through the ripped jeans as he stared at the ceiling.)

Ford looked at McGucket, still wearing the threadbare undershirt and boxers he’d started shedding into even before their bedroom door was closed, and stared distastefully at the smoke circling above their heads.

“Fidds, we got, like, 20 minutes.”

Fiddleford didn’t respond, but fished out the joint, extinguishing it against his bedside shelf and saving the remains in the drawer. He then rolled to his side, eyes fixated on the floor, and started whistling “Paint it Black.”

Ford followed his gaze to see Newton, leisurely laying on one of the pants that failed the sniff-test. When Fiddleford started whistling, Newton didn’t so much as look at him.

“It’s not gonna work, Fidds,” Ford said, rolling his eyes and making his way towards  the closet.

“Tha’s what they told the Wright brothers.” It was the first thing Fiddleford had said since getting back to the dorm, so Ford took it in good graces, but that didn’t stop the scoff from coming out.

“The Wright brothers had the laws of physics and aeronautical theory on their side. You have overrated British rock stars, and also, a complete disregard for the limited capabilities of pests.”

“Don’t talk about Newton that way. He can hear you!” Fiddleford rebutted with a gasp.

“Cockroaches don’t have ears. Get up, we’re gonna be late.”

“Yer one to talk — yer the one who’s never on time to anything. And it takes me, just a hair short of three minutes to get ready, tops”

“I’m also the one who’s ready with 25 minutes to spare.” Ford swung the closet door open.

Fiddleford’s swung both lanky legs over the side of the bed to sit up, getting his first good look at Ford and scoffed. “Bit much for a house party, don’t ya think?” he asked, gesturing towards Ford’s blazer as he stood and lifted his mattress.

“I’m not about to take fashion advice from you. I’ve seen your Aardvarks sweatshirt.”

From beneath his mattress, Fiddleford grabs a clean and now-flattened button down to throw on, and as he fumbles with the buttons with languid hands, he looks up just in time to see Ford about to place Greg in a shoe-box.

“Ford, you know damn well you’re not supposed to be hiding him away.”

“Oh sorry, you’re right. Let me just pamper my new dildo son. What, you want me to breastfeed him while I’m at it?”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt, to try! After all, the point of it is you’re supposed to take care of Greg… _nurture_ Greg.”

“I have literally never cared less about anything ever,” Ford said, leaning against the door frame

Fiddleford gave him a scathing, reproachful look, until finally, with a much-aggrieved sigh, Ford placed Greg in his inner breast pocket, leaving a slightly misshapen lump.

“There. Happy?”

“Aww, and he’s right next to yer heart too!”

“Shut up.”

Fiddleford smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and his fingers were still fumbling with the buttons as he stared down the clock. His knee rose and fall with the seconds, and Ford took a seat on his bed, resting his elbow on a tower of books that rose to his waist.

“You doin’ okay, McGucket?”

Fiddleford ignored him, staring more intently at his buttons, his hands shaking more, the harder he tried to slip them through the holes.

“Can ya grab my banjo?”

“Why would you need a banjo?”

“I dunno. I just want my banjo, I jus’... please, Ford?”

With a sigh, Ford leaned behind him and grabbed the banjo handing it over, before staring at the way Fiddleford yanked it from him and hugged it close to his waist, bending over it protectively. He bent over it while it sat in his lap, almost hiding the way he was shaking like a leaf.

“Look, Fidds… it’s just a party.”

“You don’ even _like_ parties Ford,” Fiddleford said, with an edge of irritation. “Ya don’ need to act like yer lovin’ this, not for my sake.”

And Ford swallowed the words that might have come out like _that’s true, I don’t like them, but I’m trying to_

and _maybe I want to be someone different, someone who knows why your knee is bouncing and why you look like you can’t breath because it’s not like you’re being_ **_suffocated_ **

and _maybe I want to be someone who likes parties and likes people and likes being free of a pair_

(and _if Stan’s able to become another person after leaving Jersey, why can’t I —_ Stop.)

Fiddleford managed with the last button, finally, and then dropped to his knees unceremoniously, reaching in the space below his bed and fishing around

(and if he accidentally nudges the magazine that Ford spent 48 minutes looking through last night, far be it from Ford to mention it.)

Fiddleford didn’t climb back to his feet until a solid minute had passed of reaching into the confines beneath his bed frame, and when he did, he was gripping a bottle of Kentucky bourbon by the neck in one hand and a wrinkled tie in the other, the banjo now looped around his neck.

He tossed the tie around his neck haphazardly before biting into the plastic film around the cap with his _remaining_ canine tooth with a vigor, and loosened it with his teeth before spitting it into the corner. He leaned his head back and took a deep gulp with a bitter resolve and nary a wince at the burn.

A minute before Chad was set to arrive, Ford realized he wasn’t wearing shoes, and spent a good 15 minutes looking for them.

(They were behind the toilet, and he didn’t have the heart to evict Tesla from the left loafer, so he ended up walking to the car with a litany of apologies for being late in Fiddleford’s slightly-too-tight sneakers.)

But by then, Fiddleford was walking on air and swimming in a bourbon-brought daze, clutching his banjo like a security blanket. His knee bounces were few and far between.

________________________________________

Ford’s personal experiences with alcohol were limited: there was only the bite of rubbing alcohol against cuts and bruises, chased with shots of their dad’s booze embezzled with Stanley in the dead of night, and even then, it was more out of a rite of passage or a duty to the mysterious forces of a brotherly bond than any semblance of buzzed pleasure; and even then, the memories were unremarkable.

There were no late-night adventures or moments of debauchery, just… moments. He was more talkative when buzzed, he supposed, with words and thoughts and feelings and theories flying off his tongue, while Stanley had only grown inward after a couple of shots, settled and laying on his back to avoid irritating the stitches, with the usual boisterous jokes muted down to murmurs and hums. His big _personality_ — _he’s fine_ — dissolved in liquor, and would suddenly be bite-sized and fragile; it was like he was content to let his own buzzing silence mingle with the sound of Ford talking about everything and nothing in the known and theoretical universe, both of them feeling a bit too honest for their own goods.

And then Ford’s mind flew unbidden to a whole other world of experiences with alcoholism, of wine bottles hidden in his mother’s laundry hamper, of snippets of honesty that never fit in inside her small frame, only to be released like spirits after a long drink

(because that was the only time she _could_ be honest, and when it came, it was **_biting_ **. She was a force of nature when she was drunk, his mother, a devastating tornado, a war between cold and warm fronts, a battle waged between the raving teetering mania in it’s wake and a whimpering depression in the eye of the storm, and both spat only the truths that never belonged or fit behind her dishonest teeth

and he thought of his mother swinging into his room downing a shot glass one night when Stanley was asleep and they still had the bunk beds and of watching her totter to sit down and tell Ford a story about how a week after he was born she had found a particularly superstitious aunt standing over his bed with a pair of garden shears around his tiny pink pinky muttering about omens and devils and how _honestly, baby, I’m sorry, I am so so sorry, and I love you but I almost honest-to-Moses let her do it_

and he thought of her staggering and spitting venom at Stanley and him when they found her over a bottle of Jack Daniels after the second miscarriage, screaming how the pills she took weren’t antacid tablets and that they were imipramine and that they calmed her nerves and made her head spin but _at least I don’t want to blow my fucking brains out_ and that she started taking him the day she learned she was blessed with twins _but not another one after I suppose, no I don’t deserve that_

and he thought of the smell of ammonia hitting him the second he walked up through Pines Pawns when he came home from school alone because Stanley was still in detention, and breaking down the locked bathroom door only to find her crying next to the toilet with a bottle of Smirnoff and a bucket of cleaner beneath her nose and a dazed smile on her faze that felt **more honest than anything she had ever said in her life** — Stop)

Other than that, of course, **alcoholism** and **addiction** and all those nasty words were reserved for the cage in his mind where he locked up his father’s faults on the good days, and where he lived with a hall of mirrors on the bad

(because yeah, he and Stan had long talks and long listens, and his mother had a never-ending storm brewing in her throat that everyone knew was going to kill her one day, but **_his father_ ** had belts and extension cords and a jumpiness left-over from the war and words like glass from the beach and screams like shrapnel that lived in beer-laden breath and his own liquor cabinet that got restocked once a week **and an addiction** , the kind where you love the taste of fire so much that you can’t help but breathe it and burn everyone around you,

and while some part of Ford’s mind was going on about the tragedy of compulsions and chemical dependency and the horrors of war and waxing poetic about blame resting nowhere at all and how he was fine _really Stanley I’m fine_ and his dad probably tried to kick the habit and **_must have done the best he could have, right, Stanley, because he loves us, right, Stanley?_ ** _,_ the other was thinking about the taste of copper and licking its wounds, and wondering just how in the world anyone could need anything so badly that they could hurt their children and word **addiction** would ring true, and he thought of inheritance and curses and addictions dime-store brandy, or to painting black eyes on your family, or to making sure they know they’re weaker than you, and to praying that one day you believe it yourself

 _Or addictions to getting away from the serrated beach, or addictions to fantasies of_ **_having five fingers_ ** _, or addictions to being good enough, to greatness, to being the next Sagan, or addictions to stopping an 18-year trend of suffocation, or an addiction to Fidd —_ **_Stop_ ** _)_

But Ford’s own complicated love affair with booze mattered less and less once they had climbed out of the van in front of the house and saw Fiddleford, fazed but happy, and still clutching the bottle of Kentucky with an iron grip (a grip Ford noticed, was less shaky, and while Fiddleford’s eyes were dazed, at least that panicked stare was gone, and Ford could take solace in that).

“Alrigh’ fellers,” Fiddleford said, the slurs chasing his words with richness and leisure. “N’ ladies,” he added, once Sarah and Vanessa had crawled out as well. “Ya know what we’re here ter do, to diddly-do!... Do...doo-do-doo…. I’mma see Dawn, and y’all jus… y’all jus’ _party_ er whatever, and let’s get this here thang over and dun with.” With the weak _hoorah hoorah go team_ cheer it was, he spun on his heels (a bit too forcefully, it seemed, as he had gone a full 360 degrees before righting himself towards the house), and walked, the neck of the banjo around his waist knocking into against the rail, toward the porch stairs where other drunk college kids were already gathered to make life-time mistakes at the peak of their youth.

Ford felt a pang of worry at the way Fiddleford’s words were slowed and the way he clung to the rail with each unsteady step, but the man’s knees were at least less rickety, so what else could he do?

“Hey Ford!” Fiddleford shouted, much too loudly for the few feet of distance he had trekked from the Crew, “Take it! I can hear ya thinkin’ from here!”

Fiddleford tossed the bottle of bourbon through the air like a molotov cocktail, and Ford fumbled to catch it with a too-late, meek shout of “Stop,” only barely succeeding without spilling the contents or dropping the bottle to the floor in a shower of glass.

He looked up to glare at Fiddleford, but he was already one-foot through the door, shouting to a roar of cheers and greetings, “Hey bitches! Ya’ ready for a _Gucki n_ ’?”

With a sigh, Ford looked back down at the bottle. The outside was sticky, and there was barely anything left after Fiddleford had gotten through it.

“See, anxiety schmanxiety!” he heard Chad say, and the crew had already started walking up the stairs, chuckling and shaking their heads in Fiddleford’s drunken wake. Briefly, Carlos glanced behind him to shrug at Ford with the offering of a small smile.

 _What are we gonna do with him, right?_ the smile said.

 _Strangle him, probably_ , was the reply in Ford’s glare before he let out another heavy sigh and felt lighter afterwards.

Before giving it more of a thought, he swung his head back, downing the last of the bourbon, the first drink he’d taken without a twin by his side.

 _Ah well_ , he thought. _I’m already changing, might as well change faster. In for a penny, in for a pound_ , and so he followed the Crew, _his_ Crew up the stairs, feeling a bit too much like a hippie and a revolutionary for his liking, but managing to find it in him to like it nonetheless.

________________________________________

By the time Ford had finished listening in on the negotiations with Dawn (of which he remembered almost nothing, but he felt pretty good, so he could at least be sure that they had gone well) Chad was upstairs with a girl with green hair and Sarah and Vanessa were leaning against each other in a hot tub and Carlos had found another corner for himself, surrounded by walls and humming with the music booming speakers.

And here he was, sitting on a small stool near the kitchen bar, blathering with Fiddleford between cans of beer and bouts of laughter and the stares of other drunk freshman, balancing a 12-pound physics book _he got from God-knows-where_ on his left knee and an 8-pound biology tome on his right — across from him, Fiddleford sat on an equally narrow stool, balancing a mechanic’s manual and a trigonometry textbook. The banjo had been shed and near-forgotten, leaning against a wall in the kitchen.

“Cosecθ=1cosecθ=1, you hayseed! This is child’s play, Fiddle —(hic)—ford! Two identical cars collide head on. Each car is traveling at 100 km/h. The impact force on each car is the same as hitting a solid wall at…”

“100 kilometers an hour! D’ya think I’m a moron, Ford? If(1+sinA) (1+sinB) (1+sinC)= (1−sinA) (1−sinB)(1−sinC)(1+sinA) (1+sinB)(1+sinC)=(1−sinA)(1−sinB)(1−sinC), then the expression on each side of the equation equals what?”

Ford thought for a while, his eyes already heavy with drunkenness, running through the numbers in his head, “P is equal to tanA.tanB.tanC! If an archer pulls back 0.75 m on a bow which has a stiffness of 200 N/m —”

“Hold up, Ford, the answer is Cos-A-b-c! Who’s the hayseed now? Shot! Shot! Shot!”

The crowd that had formed around (—y _ou have to watch these absolute_ **_fucking lunatics_ ** _man;  they take a shot if they answer wrong! They take a shot if a textbook falls off their knee! They take a shot if they take more than 5 seconds to answer! They take a shot if—_ ) started to chant with him, and Ford didn’t hesitate before downing another shot from the row on the counter next to him and dropping the empty glass on the carpet behind him with half-dozen others.

The crowd cheered with a litany of responses, ranging from his name to a few shouts of “Go, Strangler!,” but Ford basked in it nonetheless, looking around at the living room of the house that was worth more than Pine’s Pawns 12 times over, at the faces he hardly recognized from classes he barely paid attention to and whispers around campus.

(and he wondered, vaguely, as he stared at the crowd of people he didn’t much care to impress for once in his life, if this is what _personality_ felt like, and a part of him that he wouldn’t remember in the morning felt underwhelmed, and for the first time in a while, he pitied Stanley)

But even so he basked in their cheers, suddenly doubly-aware that there was a dildo next to his heart, in a room too rich for his blood, complete with a wine shelf and plush carpet and a new television and a piano two teenagers were currently making out on, before turning to the heavy-lidded eyes of Fiddeford and finding himself blushing _for no reason_ — **Sto** —

But then the music **Stopped**.

The crowd that had been cheering erupted in boos, and the entire room turned in unison towards the speakers, where a bashful freshman who couldn’t handle his booze had toppled over, tripping on them and tearing the socket out of the wall.

The entire room groaned, and the music that Ford hadn’t even been listening to before left behind a silence that was uncomfortable, and he swore he heard his ears ringing in its absence.

Dawn, with her short hair slicked back and natural swagger, rose from the couch where she had been watching the nerd fight resume, looked to Fiddleford with a grin.

“Play something on the banjo, Guck!”

Ford didn’t hide his distaste, muttering “God, no, anything but that!” In their audience, a few faces nodded in agreement.

“But what will we do about music, then?” Carlos called from his corner, where he was sitting with his legs crossed a half-drunk beer in his hand.

“Ford can play piano,” Fiddleford drawled with an air of mischief, and the words came out in one breathlessly excited slur.

Ford’s eyes widen, trying to plant  a nonchalance that wasn’t there, but the crowd was already piqued and murmurs had begun making their way around the room.

“No I can’t,” he said, instantly.

“Yes you can, Ford. Ya said you could.”

“I lied,” he said, unconvincingly, and he could almost hear the voice in his head jeering (but not too effectively, because even the voice is too drunk to lecture and cheat and **suffocate** him now and)

“Then it'll be really embarrassing' when you go up there and play awfully, huh,” was Fiddleford’s sly response, and he offered a wink that Ford couldn’t help holding in the forefront of his mind, even as he was half-dragged by the elbow across the living room to the piano, covered in a splattering of half-drunk glasses of booze (but now devoid of horny teenagers)

As he sat in the piano bench, much too drunk to protest, and much too eager to please (but why, why, seriously, why not just walk out now) and thinking much too hard about _that wink_ and about stormy eyes and about crooked smiles, he pressed a key and started playing the piano without really knowing why he’d chosen the song he had— an old Velvet Underground song that he heard once upon a time

(and unbidden, images of Stan humming a dragging loop of a tune and swaying with a dazed look in his eye after visiting the boy at the pier and smelling like old cigarettes wreak havoc in the back of Ford’s head, mingling with the sneaking suspicion that was only blooming at the time that the boy was _a bad influence_ that **_This song is about drugs Stanley_** and how Ford had whispered it like a conspiracy but his brother had only shrugged, like there were worse things a song could be about, with a mutter of _Maybe not_ and **_Maybe there’s something more there_** and somewhere echoing in Ford’s mind was a thought that felt a lot like _I have Sagan, I guess Stan needed Lou Reed)_

And his fingers found themselves past the trembling, to start flirting against the piano with a **123456-12-123456-12** , like a ceaseless metronome, counting his fingers and his hands, as the melody to a song that he barely remembered burst forth into the room.

Thoughtlessly, he grabbed a lukewarm drink that had been abandoned on the piano and it was probably scotch but fuck if he knew and he took a sip, feeling a lot like _In for a penny in for a lifetime of chemical dependency,_ but only then did the lyrics started to come out as a low growl, unsteady and barely there above the piano’s rhythm, as a whisper scratching in his throat,

“ _I’m waiting_ …”

and he became painfully aware that if he was going to sing (humiliate himself) he needed to be louder and he forced the air out of his lungs until next pitchy note evened itself out:

“ ** _I-I'm... waiting for my man…_ ** **”**

There was some satisfaction to the hush that settled around the surrounding crowd, even if his lungs wanted to stop working the second they could be heard, and even if he could see McGucket leave the room with a giggle out of the corner of his eye, and even if that hurt for some reason...

_“Got twenty-six dollars... in my hand…”_

(And at that, he found himself staring at his playing hands, just because they were mentioned, because they always were an unspoken elephant in every room, aren’t they, and for some reason his eyes catch the corner where Carlos had been sitting before and the spot is **empty** and then)

_“Up to Lexington... one, two, five..._

_Feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive,”_

(— there’s a kinetic energy building in his fingertips as they rap against the keys and there’s a

 **_123456-12-_ ** _)_

_“Oooooh, I'm waiting for my man...”_

He heard a strumming, and looked up to see the crowd now trained on a doorway, and it felt like a reprieve as Fiddleford stumbled into the room once more, banjo looped over his neck, joining the piano’s notes ceaselessly.

Ford couldn't help the grin stretching into his drunkard-red cheeks, and he felt like muttering something about it being _much too late for banjo playing Fiddleford, you know the rule_ s, but the words were sticky and never escaped his throat as Fiddleford seated himself on the very edge of the piano bench, leaning slightly towards Ford’s speechless smile.

 _“Hey white boy, what you doin' uptooown?_ ” Fiddleford drawled, and with a start Ford realized that he’s still playing and the song was still going but Fiddleford only leaned closer, and Ford could still smell the Kentucky bourbon beneath the cocktails from the bar as Fiddleford sang, _“Hey whi—_ **_Jersey boy_ ** _, you chasin' our women around?”_

The mischievous glint in Fiddleford’s unfocused drunken stare as he sang was enough to make Ford snort but for the debonair drawl only found in the bottom of whatever cheap liquor underage boys could afford and **123456-12-**

Ford returned the glint with a side of dancing in his fingers, leaning against his friend on the too-small bench, and he offered the next set of lyrics with a laugh.

“ _Oh pardon me sir, it's the furthest from my mind,”_ his baritone flared as he smiled, nodding to Fiddleford, with a wide toothy grin that hurt his cheeks _but honestly he could barely feel a thing_ . “ _I'm just lookin' for a dear, dear friend of mine—”_

There’s a slurring “Aw shucks, Ford, you _charmer_ ,” and then together they bellowed together, throwing their heads back with an enthusiastic, if tuneless, run of “ **_I'm waiting for my man_ **.”

Fiddleford was the first to lean away, still strumming as he stood with the banjo, his top button undone ( _when did that even happen)._

“ _Here he comes, he's all dressed in black,_ ” Fiddleford sang, a chord too early, eyeing and gesturing towards Ford’s black too-tight turtleneck beneath the suit jacket, and earning a cackle from the more inebriated faces in the not-jeering-anymore crowd.

Ford rolled his eyes but found it in himself to dig an elbow into Fiddleford’s hip, and returned, “ _Beat up shoes... and a big straw hat._ ”

Fiddleford looked indignant, and with a murmur of “Only in the farm house, Jersey,” he stepped away, working the crowd without breaking rhythm and hurling back a pointer finger and an accusation of his own:

“ _He's never early,_ that’s right _, he’s always late_.”

“Hey! I’m not —” Ford started to lie, indignation also brewing beneath the smile—

But then Fiddleford swiveled back into the piano bench, and Ford was frozen within a note and a half, as Fidds looked into Ford’s eyes and, barely above a humming whisper, keened with,

“ _First thing you learn is that you always gotta_ **_wait_**.”

(and for some reason the note felt like Fiddleford was promising something, and Ford was staring back intently as though in a trance, like all the mysteries that he’d always chased were living there in that moment, and at what it meant, what **That Look** was, and there was a tenderness and)

But the next bar approached and Ford had broken the trance and with a **12-123456-12** , both boys leaned back with an almighty shout:

**_“OOOOH! I'm waiting for my man!”_ **

Fiddleford jumped off the bench  with no coordination, and as Ford slammed out a sharp glissando after a beat, the moment was gone as quickly as it started and another settled around its bones.

 _It’s the lighting_ , Ford thought to himself, reconciling with his need to stare at the hillbilly move, devoid of all rhythm, across the room. Because yeah, the lava-lamps were casting a comfortably eerie gold glow around Fiddleford and something that felt like what he imagined drugs were like and something else that felt a lot like **_addiction_** settled in Ford’s stomach

and his head was spinning and his fingers hurt and _jesus fucking christ do I have a test tomorrow_ , and _Boy, do I need a drink_ , so he lifted himself out of the bench just enough to keep playing without sacrificing a note and reached to grab at the last of the litany of warming drinks on the edge of the piano lid, before drowning them without tasting them and dropping the glasses by his tapping feet.

(and _maybe Dad was onto something_ he thinks and _maybe this is what_ **_addiction_ ** _is_ he thinks and _maybe there are worse things_ and _maybe there’s something more there_ and —)

He stared at Fiddleford dragging himself up the steps opposite the room to piano, watched him make a drunken stagemaster out of his anxiety-ridden frame, staggering and walking like he was pulled up by his hips rather than his legs, and Ford forces the word _beautiful_ out of his mind before it could do any real damage

(— and _yeah_ , he thinks, he could live to get **_addicted_ ** to this, live to watch Fiddleford carry on with a solo on the staircase that makes college girls with too much alcohol in their system and too much hairspray on their heads swoon like it was his god _damn job_ — Stop — **123456-12-** )

“ ** _Up to a brownstone, up three flights of stairs,_ ** ” Fiddleford abandoned the banjo, let it limply hanging off his neck, and threw his arms against the rail more forcefully than gracefully, managing to hang on through his off-key shout.

A crowd gathered beneath Fiddleford at the foot of the stairs, and there’re so many faces but _his_ face looks like _Anxiety shmanxiety_ and his knees stand solid and he croons, none too gently, “ **Everybooooody-body's pinned you, but nobody ca-a-a-aaares** ,” keeping the last note going with a sweet wallowing trill until he caught Ford’s ( staring ) eye and found it in the same breath to shout, “Nobody cares, Jersey!” like it’s a wondrous thing and a new discovery and _Good God, he looks amazing when he’s learned something new_

(and it’s a trick of the light probably but there are tears in Fiddleford’s  eyes probably and Ford’s not sure, but he feels something release in him as well)

With a gaping leap, Fiddleford jumped down three steps to the carpet below and shimmied through the parting crowd to make his way back to the piano, singing the entire time and never dropping the fragile eye contact (tentatively like he’s holding out a glass chalice and balancing it in his stare as he works his way across the room) singing all the way,

“ _He's got the works,_ **_gives you sweet taste_ ** _,_

 _Ah, then you gotta split because you got no time to waste,_ ”

and Fiddleford turned, swung and spun on his toes like a ballerina, and then leaned back across the newly-cleared-of-alcohol piano lid like a burlesque girl, and for a fleeting second Ford’s mind wanted to scream about _the duality of man_ , but there’s no time for that as he banged on the keys and joined in once more: “ **I'm waiting for my man.”**

Fiddleford settled with his back slathered against the reverberating piano, humming along and looking at Ford with heavy lidded eyes, like the music was moving _through_ him, waiting for Ford to sing them out for the last few bars.

Ford’s baritone had dropped down into a bass and found it’s steadiness to solo with a threadbare power he didn’t even know was there and _he doesn’t know where this song or the tears or the power are all coming from_

(but it’s probably from the alcohol and it’s from probably the man with a mostly-unbuttoned wrinkled trainwreck of a shirt laying down on the piano that Ford’s currently pounding an allegro into with fingertips that _holy Moses_ are definitely bruised by now and it’s probably from something like letting go of inhibitions even if it was only _until tomorrow_ )

“ _Baby don't you holler,_ **_darlin' don't you bawl and shoooouuuut_ **

_I'm feeling g-g-g-good — you know I'm gon’ work it oooout,_ ”

Ford’s head leans back with the lyrics and he’s euphoric

(and it feels like he might never care again and it feels like **_until tomorrow_** and it feels like ~~**having five fingers**~~ , as he sings a song about drugs or maybe about queers or maybe about a little bit of both because _maybe there’s something more there_ )

and he sings, closing it out,

 _“I'm feeling good,_ **_I feel oh so fine_ **

**_Until tomorrow_ ** _, but that's just some other time_

_Oooooh, I'm waiting for my man_

**_Oh! I’m waiting —_ ** _”_

And in the split second between hearing the window **s h a t t e r** to his left, he only has the time to shove Fiddleford out of the way, off the piano lid and to the floor, and — **Stop**

and he barely recognizes a fat ugly face and a mop of unkempt hair outside, walking away from the porch from outside the hollow window frame and — **Stop**

And it was then he saw, through the sparkling debris and the drunken stupor, that Carlos was on the carpet, bleeding from the head and covered in glass like a Jersey beach.

**Stop.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry about the wait for this chapter — I'm dealing with some medical expenses and a bit of a stressful stretch, and you can read more about here: http://fordtato.tumblr.com/post/163430747640/hey-everyone-fordtato-here-asking-for-a-spot-of
> 
> I know my chapters are always late, but “First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait.” ^_^ 
> 
> Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this! It was my longest chapter yet! I tried something different with the characters this time, and I am fueled by comments, and would appreciate feedback. <3
> 
> ALSO:  
> As for the party scene, it was probably my favorite scene to write in this entire fic — the song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C18lkTJWmUA) was sung by Lou Reed, the lead of Velvet Underground, and he was a bisexual icon of mine, who grew up repressing his identity (his parents signed him up for conversion therapy when he was younger, and I think he struggled with his identity for his whole life) . The song, "Waiting for the man", is said to be about waiting for a dealer, but the first time I heard it, I had no idea, and I felt it was more gay-coded than anything in the 60s, and when I looked into this life and his interviews, it seems like it was intentional! Velvet Underground was the precursor to a lot in the punk genre (and seeing as I've basically written Stanchez into this) so it makes sense that Stan would have been exposed to it through Rick's tastes.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> You can get updates on tumblr at fordtato.tumblr.com


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